Vulcans Don't Play Basketball
by ninety6tears
Summary: Maybe some day they'll have something in common, besides a first officer who seems sometimes like an impossible code to crack. Kirk/Uhura with a side of Spock.
1. Prologue

Why it was absolutely necessary to stop at his cabin—for what, a drink of water?—on his way being a good captain and a good not-quite-friend by escorting a pretty out-sorted Uhura to her quarters, he will never have a good explanation for. But it happened: With a decidedly innocent guiding grasp around her waist, he was muttering, "You mind if I ask if you've ever been this drunk before?" as they swiveled through the door, Kirk resting her shoulder to the wall and intending to head straight across the room for a glass. The question was practically giving her the benefit of the doubt, but he did not, would not analyze the fact that he'd never seen her half this gone on a couple shots of the hard stuff, that it apparently seemed to be mostly the heartbreak talking.

"I'm not that—" Uhura protested, and with lifted eyebrows that seemed a badly calculated imitation of a certain Vulcan of mutual acquaintance, she pointedly demonstrated a few steps of walking in a perfectly straight line, getting the foot placement just fine and commendably but still, those heels are high. He caught her with an annoyed grunt (God, _why_, why did he invite her in?) as she stumbled forward, like it was practically on purpose. She laughed at his troubled expression and he couldn't even begin to pinpoint how far from an actual real laugh it was. Like somebody trying to tell a fucking joke while falling off a cliff.

He set her straight and standing, but she was refusing to use her legs, just noodling up against him a little too closely, and he managed to steady her farther against the wall and hadn't really planned where to go after that.

"Uh. Drunk." She finished her sentence with the usual decisive grace of sibilance, the voice echoing sort of wrongly in the cabin.

He rolled his eyes, trying to disentangle himself, growing increasingly uncomfortable with the proximity she was allowing him. He cleared his throat. "Uh, Lieutenant..."

A raspy giggle came up from her glazed expression, and before he knew what was happening, one of her hands traveled down his chest, teased around his abdomen, and then lowered...

"Hh—hey, you know what? Let's, uh, let's not—"

"Let's not what?" Nyota demanded gruffly. "Really, James T. _Kirk_ says _no_? Guess it's all about the chase, huh?"

It was Jim's turn to utter a slightly frantic laugh, reaching down to pull her hand out of the inch it had made down his waist band. "Believe it or not," he said, a throaty catch of something evident in his voice, "I don't sleep with drunk girls. Especially those who've explicitly expressed varying degrees of hatred for me when sober..."

"Oh, look at this. Watch out, captain, you might get caught acting like a gentleman for once..." Funny how her words were so precise now, so enunciated. Her hands moved up his chest until he grabbed her wrists, his eyes widening with the _various_ kinds of discomfort she was provoking in different parts of him, one of those parts being in an electrifying proximity to her hips guiding more and more lazily against his.

When that comment really got to him, though, he was just done, and his expression was a lot less easy on her. Grim and quizzical, measuring.

"How do you say 'rebound' in Vulcan?"

Her eyes got a little catty. She brought her face closer to him, edged her cheek in next to his. She whispered, "Vulcans don't play basketball" in a way that made Kirk notice she smelled pretty damn good for a long enough half-moment for her to pull her lips down his jaw, gently bite at his chin, a giggle running dark and silent up her chest.

Jim thought, _Fuck_.

"You know this isn't about chivalry," he said, becoming pointedly motionless, "The only thing I'm worried about is my goddamn_ first officer_ discovering that I slept with his..._ex-girlfriend_, in the first twenty-four hours of—"

"Well, it doesn't have to be your 'goddamn first officer's' business, especially if he's nothing more than your 'goddamn first officer'..." Down below, she was kicking off her heels, settling her feet down; the leveling motion made her body automatically drag a soft inch or so against his. He was praying to _god_he wouldn't get any harder.

On top of his stammering self-control, Kirk was growing slightly appalled by Uhura's behavior. This was like a relatively unimaginative fantasy he should be having in the safety of his inner perversions, where there aren't taxing concerns of the kind he absolutely sucks at dealing with, such as the absolutely nightmarish possibility of his Vulcan friend finding out about something like this and actually _not_ being able to dislocate his jaw for it like any human being would irrationally but somewhat justifiably do. And not to mention the hovering possibility of the Enterprise's communications officer being an apparent emotional wreck.

"You really are pretty fucked up over this, aren't you?" he mumbled. His and Uhura's faces were still too close, poised in a rough nuzzle. He was beginning to realize he felt too sorry for her to move away completely; he couldn't kick her to the curb, even if he was being played that way, he didn't care. And immediately that thought rubbed him very wrong: "What the hell's wrong with you anyway? There is no way you really want to fuck me."

He shouldn't have said that. She looked directly into his eyes and he got a glance of the sharp, reckless gloom hiding in hers before her lips brushed into his with a kind of (_no-maybe-we're-not-really-I-can-pretend-we're-not_) gentle pressure that was surpassed within a second, her mouth pushing and now opening slowly and not that he was taking notes here, but: salty-bittersweet, not a fake perfumey sweet, _nice_. And now her arms were wrapping around and pulling him in closer, and the small amount of alcohol he'd had at the rec party was just enough to make his mind turn on all the wrong lights as she tasted his tongue, everything warm and soft as the rest of her body started to melt into him a little. Now he was pushing into her hips, enjoying just one smooth groove of her lower waist with his hand, just that. He broke off from the kiss, letting his lips stay just against hers, and said, both softly and defiantly, "Dammit, Uhura, you're one of the nicest women I know. You're better than crawling into bed with me just because you're hoping he'll find out..."

Her eyes clicked down to the side just a moment before ignoring him, planting another kiss at his jaw and following her woozy fancy down his neck. Down below, she'd managed to get her legs tangled around his, just dangerously enough. The suddenly more tangible pleasure was jolting; Jim let out a mix of a deep sigh and nervous laugh, let it sink for a second, then his hands were reaching up solidly and pushing her back by the shoulders and holding her in a detached grasp that was the sternest "no" he'd managed since they came into the room.

For a good moment they just stared different kinds of daggers at each other, Uhura's eyes slowly narrowing. "You think he's capable of something like jealousy?" she asked, her voice hanging off like a tired limb. "Really?"

"I don't know," Jim shook his head earnestly. "Maybe, maybe not. But there's another person in the equation, and there it gets a little more complicated than just jealousy, if you really want to get into that."

"Hmm." She squinted at him a little coldly. He tried to figure out what she must be thinking, and she took the moment to begin a slow working up the inside of his leg with her own, "You know, when you work in my field and you spend enough time monitoring the tones and patterns of different languages, you get to a point where you recognize the tiniest inflection in people's voices, regardless of language, when they are talking about something that's a little...close to home? When somebody is saying a word that can never be just a word..."

"Get your leg off me, and get to the point—"

"You could say 'jealousy' ten different ways."

In the sudden directness of him bearing angrily into her space, he forgot not to touch her. His face was a steely, barely composed emotion. He just said with a quiet, angry tremor, "You think I'm happy about this?" Daring her to answer.

She looked back at him with a similar sense of grim resolution; the only thing she did was wield him back up to her with a blunt grasp at his hips.

"You think I'm..." For half a second, nothing happened except a hackling, barely perceptible change in Jim. Then he pulled back, bluntly pulling Uhura along with a careless rough tug at her wrist; he didn't know if he cared anymore if she fell over. He left her teetering close to the bed and started leaning down to remove his shoes. "Take off your clothes, and shut up."

She only stood there for the next few seconds, her features curling out in surprise. The hesitation irritated him, so he knocked her with a couple light pushes back onto the bed; she landed on her back with her legs hanging off while he quickly removed his shirt and jersey. She finally obediently propped herself up to remove her own top and then reached under to unzip her skirt, which he mechanically then helped her slip off. Her bare legs curled up in that womanly reflex of coyness, but he immediately undid it, propping them open and getting on top of her.

They nudged and backed up farther until they were situated semi-comfortably on the small bed; Uhura's breaths were speeding up with a slightly frantic color, and she beat Jim to undoing and footing down his pants as if she couldn't handle a moment that wasn't mindlessly bent on getting further, couldn't handle any actual thoughts. With a hint of a sneer Jim worked his hand down her hip, trailing a smooth caress down her backside; and then around, expertly moving his wrist and palm to tease at the bareness before he hooked her panties down with his hand's pursuit of the long line of smooth legs. As he poised them back to opening around him, he felt them tremoring like grass stems. Her motions became more coiled with eagerness as she roamed Jim back up to meet her below the hips. His elbows landed in a baiting position on either side of her with his body which, considering that it was on top of her, was considerably detached...

"Take the bra off," he demanded impatiently. It was the only article left between them, so it might as well go, he was thinking with a grim abandon. The expression on her face was nearly unreadable, faintly shy.

He sighed, "Computer, dim lights." And then everything felt just a tiny bit slower as she poised herself up and let his hands roam with hungry ease to free the last of her skin from something milky-soft like something-percent polyester, and what the fuck, Jim, you aren't thinking about _percentages_ right now—

"Jim," Uhura croaked, wriggling up and wrapping her limbs around him, "Come on—"

Everything was coming together in a groggy slow ascent, but now he felt her hands urging over his back, soft feet and thighs moving up his legs, and he kind of hated her saying his name like that. Or at all. In the same snagging urge to just make her stop talking that he'd had a moment ago, he scooped and pressed his hand high up on the back of her neck, nestled his mouth a landing base at the darkened stretch of collarbone, and then pushed.

As it started, as her immediate gasps pitched into a slight whine all too close to his own ears, he completely lost any of the sense of control he'd been exacting just before. He'd after all completely failed to take into account that it was going to feel pretty fucking good no matter what he did. He let out one consternated syllable followed by a rather lavishing series of helpless groans as his torso rocked the curve of his hips into her with what he knew would be a pretty bland lack of technique if that actually mattered at all right now.

Below him she was similarly cracking apart; the urging in her hoarse gasps sounded like something pulling, scraping out of her. Like something underused, and no, but yes: he had to wonder if she hadn't done this in a long time, or at least not like this.

Kicked headfirst into that curiosity, he arched himself clean into a different groove of proximity; pulling up one knee higher till the warmth of an ankle was running its touch along him with new wanting, he didn't know why but he landed his mouth on hers to taste, gently, while he went suddenly deeper. With the fuller, blunter motions she reacted with a tensing grip where her hands held his side and at his shoulder, but she opened her mouth to him with a warm moan crackling into his. It was feeling pretty damn_ nice _by now, and a feeling of vertigo lunged into Jim's stomach that quite vividly reminded him of why this was a terrible idea. A heat was bending him charred out to the edge of a thing he'd never allowed a second thought of because maybe he needed _something_ to pat himself on the back for, a token of integrity, but no. He wasn't bludgeoned over enough with his body telling him _fuck integrity_ not to be realizing, with blunt gollying wonder, _I really am a piece of shit_.

When she got closer, she was brash and greedy, pulling her knees up around him and, "_Jim—fuck—more, God_—"

Even in his half-swooning rhythms against her shoulder, he thought, not his fucking name again. "Shut up," he groaned, even as he felt himself wringing up tighter in response.

"Jim—"

And then he grabbed a handful of her hair at the back, insistent. "Nyota," he growled, almost threateningly, "Please shut the fuck up."

He gave her more, leaning up a little but crooking his glances again into the dim facelessness at her shoulder; and her head tossed down, nudging farther into his chest as she locked up in a shuddering silence, reaching the end. He felt himself briskly following over, let out a final defeated grunt and clutched his frame into hers, letting his shoulder collapse clumsily into her...

Just as this was happening, he tensed up all over again, having heard her let out a tiny, minute shriek. He backed up above her: "Woah. What—?"

He could tell she was clutching her hand to her mouth, and she replied with a tone of gloomed annoyance, "It's nothing..."

"Bullshit, what did I do?" He sighed, speaking a little louder, "Lights. Low level."

The room settings obeyed in accordance, and Uhura was leaning forward, pulling a sheet up over her, one hand still nursing her face. "I bit my lip, that's all."

"Is it bad? Should we...McCoy—?"

"_No_..."

"Well, why..." Jim's eyes widened a little, his head dipping down to look at her. "Why are you _crying_?"

Nyota had managed to find some garment to hold up to stop the bleeding. "My eyes are_ watering_," she corrected, glaring. But then she said, "Because I bit my lip. Because...you're nice. I didn't expect that."

And Jim needed a second to process that in any case, so he got up and put his briefs on and went to the bathroom to find her a swab or some shit like that. When he returned she was mostly clothed, and the bleeding must have stopped because she was really just sitting there.

They didn't manage to form any words again until a few minutes later when he was handing her a glass of something with a pinkish tint, which she managed to eye with a deal of puzzlement.

"One of those delightful cocktails Bones programmed into the replicators," Jim explained dryly. "It's supposed to prevent hangovers."

She rolled her eyes, more at herself than anything, as she reached for it. "I may not even be _that_drunk, really," she admitted. There was something apologetic about it, but Jim didn't know.

He pulled on a pair of lounge pants and sat next to her, leaving a good space between them. After a moment, she finally volunteered to faintly explain, "I wasn't trying to hurt him. I was trying to hurt you."

"...Great," Jim scoffed. Then, "What?...Why?"

Uhura shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know. I guess I just kind of wanted to...get back at you or something."

As Jim slowly took that in she took the moment to knock back a good amount of the pink stuff. The taste sent her face into a pinched grimace.

With a wipe at her mouth she complained, "_Blugh_—What is _in _this?"

Jim interrupted, "Are you fucking serious?"

She steeled her jaw a bit before managing to look him in the eyes. "Yes."

Uhura set down her glass, turned and pulled on the last of her clothes, and inched herself off the bed. Jim watched her, looking altogether roughed up by the state of things rather than anywhere near focused enough about the evening's upset to really be angry.

"Look, I don't want you to think this was exactly planned," she said, turning to look at him once she was standing. "I just absolutely hated you today, and then I was..._drunk_ or something, and I'm_ sorry_."

Jim finally managed something like a crooked smile. "Why, Miss Uhura. Are you admitting you don't hate me every day?"

Maybe he just wanted to wipe that bothersome remorse off her features, and it worked. They both knew from the look she gave him then that the Jim Kirk she saw there was the same one who had made her smile four years ago in a bar with some badly placed flirting and a dirty comment on xenolinguistics, a person she never really let herself see after that time, that minute.

Jim flatly said, "Nyota..."

It didn't seem to mean anything right then except that he was never going to say it again. Suddenly, with a willful look, she bent over, placed a hand on his chin and kissed him on the cheek. As she pulled away, her hand, and a slightly bothered pair of eyes lingered on his face. Her brows lowered. "You really are sweet," she proclaimed with annoyance, as if she'd lost some bet with herself. Jim's eyes were filling with endearing triumph, but only his eyes, as she turned to walk away.

"Wait—"

She turned back.

He blinked, still structuring the thoughts into words. The strangeness of the question seemed to convey the frailty of his thinking closely enough that it hardly even mattered what he was asking, when he finally just said, "What else don't Vulcans do?"

She sighed, shifting on her feet a little, crossing her arms. "They don't stop being someone's friend because of something that happened with an ex. You don't need me to tell you he'd find that _beyond _illogical," she finally said reassuringly. "As for the rest...You're gonna have to figure that out by yourself."


	2. Possibly Maybe

She spends her shore leaves by herself now, for the most part, or at least ends up beaming back up on her own if she spends some of the time with fellow officers. She likes the feeling of wandering off on her own, leaving her own mark of a part of what she is without the uniform, even if she is in uniform. She does at least one thing on every planet that only she will ever know about, one thing that won't be remarked on in the constant attempts at small talk aboard the ship, one thing that won't be catalogued and copied into a data log, a progress report, a correction of a translation of a tricky transmission. Secrets give her a weird sense of power or control; she tries not to think about how her mother would have reduced it to some kind of coping mechanism, because some days it makes her completely forget that she's even coping, that she's missing anything.

A friendly ensign welcomes her back aboard as she heads to her quarters. She's arriving a couple hours earlier than the usual last-minute transporter wash-up of officers reporting back from recreation time. Before she goes through the sliding door, the general comm buzzes an announcement, a routine reminder that ends with a mention of the ship's chief science officer.

By the time she's done changing and adjusting her hair in front of the mirror, the name has formed into a solid phantom memory, something she's so used to reflecting on that it hardly even affects her any more. Old-fashioned dental floss taut between her fingers pinches under her nails, and she hears the collected tightness of a man's voice, recalls feeling like a fool, expecting more from him, and this is just doing the dishes, ridding herself of her messy thoughts as she swishes and spits and sets the glass down, standing up ramrod straight as if answering to herself. This is done and thought up in the bathroom in the morning, not on the bridge, not at work, not in front of anybody.

She checks the stardate after she's put on her uniform and realizes, in addition to her parents' anniversary coming up, that the last personal conversation she had with Spock happened exactly a year ago.

Before she leaves the bathroom, she opens a drawer, picking a subtle color from the bottom of a few scattered things, the only one she owns. A fresh coat of lipstick, admiring the effect in the mirror, and she's satisfied.

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.

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Jim and Bones bring a spell of lively chatter into the sparsely populated gymnasium at 0500, drawing a blandly respectful greeting from an ensign on the way to the four treadmills lined up against the far wall. Only one is already in use; she coolly maintains her prompt jogging pace without any particular acknowledgment as Jim takes the mill right next to her, resuming his argument with McCoy for the moment as the doctor throws his towel over his shoulder and starts adjusting the elevation on the second to farthest one.

"So anyway, clearly if I touched her she was gonna freak out, so—"

"So _don't touch her_, Bones!"

"She needed the vaccination, Jim, I can't tell you how tired I am of this finnicky attitude about medicine in—in this whole damn side of the quadrant, it seems like..."

"Morning, Uhura," Jim nods in her direction, leaning on the side railings as he starts a brisk walking pace.

"Good morning, Captain," she replies. He can't help smirking while continuing to listen to McCoy as she turns up the speed on her treadmill just one setting, starting a more brisk run.

"Did you do something to your hair?" Bones gruffly asks.

Uhura chuckles. "Yeah."

It takes Jim a minute. "Oh. It is different." He seems to merely contemplate whether he could get away with complimenting it, but the doctor gives it a mutter of friendly approval.

Then as if McCoy's talking to Uhura brought her into the conversation, Jim looks over back at her and starts teasing, "Hey, how was _your_ shore leave? And by that, I mean...your date?"

A scoff from Bones on his left; Uhura is rolling her eyes and saying, "You were in the bar?"

The chorus of dissaproval continues with McCoy's, "Dammit, Jim, you can be such a creep sometimes!"

"No, no, no..." Jim waves his hands around in a gesture of innocence. "It's not like _that_, I just wanna know if she had a nice time, she looked like she was having a nice time—"

She makes a groan and rubs a palm against her forehead. "_Jim_..."

"It's not like that," he insists again; appealing to Bones, he points at Uhura. "Come on, have you ever seen this woman work a room? She's like a pro at it."

"No, because he doesn't leer at other women all the time..."

"I was just having a beer while this was going on, good God! I mean, come on, baby, your snob level goes through the roof when you're out for a good time. Like—" Jim makes dainty motions in the air: " 'Oh, do not even think about offering to buy me a drink unless you have first attained for me a rare Malonian flower that grows only in the springtime'..."

Uhura, still looking intently forward, cracks a smile.

"...'Unless of course, you are an excrutiatingly boring and serious person, in which case I'm buying _your_ drink'..."

"Hey!" she warns, but she's laughing now.

Bones isn't laughing, just rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, I was kidding about that last part," Jim says, easing into Uhura's good humor. "I'm not making fun of you, you know."

"Uh-huh." She grins.

"I'm not making fun of you," he says again. "So, come on, you left with him..."

She looks just as set on not spilling anything as before, but after a long hesitation makes a self-annoyed grunt. "Okay, okay, it was...really awkward, actually."

"Yeah?"

"Really?" McCoy chimes in, slightly betraying his former attitude.

"Well, we went back to his place, and it was really nice and everything..." She stops to cringe. "But then later he starts being a little _too_ sweet, talking like he wants to see me again..."

Jim just sighs in understanding. "Oh."

"Poor guy," Bones offers.

"I know!" Uhura winces. "I sort of assume when I'm in uniform that that gives off...the right message, you know?"

"Not always," Jim says.

Bones scoffs. "I think in your case, Jim, it's your fault they get the wrong message."

When Jim doesn't reply, Uhura just says, "People see things the way they want to see them." That earns a cocked eyebrow from Bones, and when Jim looks over she's riding the slowing stop to the end of the mill, snatching up her towel to rub at her glistening neck.

"See you, doctor," she sighs politely. "Jim?"

He looks.

"Don't call me 'baby'."

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.

.

There is the beach with a fine blue sand where the officers kick off their shoes and hike up their pants, ankles speckled softly with the pastel color that sticks to their feet. She sees him approaching minutes in advance, so when he comes up behind her where the water almost laps at their feet, she hardly turns to look.

"Come here to ruin my shore leave, Captain?"

"Naturally. But I bought you this ice cream...thing. I'm warning you, it tickles on the way down."

"It's not ice cream. It's_ kphali _custard. And it doesn't _tickle_, what are you talking about?"

"Yes it does. Here—"

A lightened giggle rings over the tranquil wild noise that quietly breezes all around them; they are too far from any of the other crew members to even recognize the color of anyone else's uniforms on the ribboning stretch of landscape as Uhura teases, "Looks like you dropped yours."

"Who says that wasn't yours?"

"I'm kidding...Go ahead, you eat it."

"No, look, you're gonna eat it. And your throat's gonna tingle and your eyes'll water like hell, and then I'll laugh."

One frosty morsel of the creamy white clump goes down harmlessly at first, then it does tickle, more like an aggressive menthol burn. It's not altogether unpleasant but a little overwhelming. She rips out a couple coughs, but he doesn't laugh, only smirking mutely as he hands her his drink. He finishes the rest, allowing her the humor of his minor choking fit after he runs out of water.

After he's keeling over the raspy, noisy end, making it a little worse by laughing at himself, she offers him a pat on the shoulder as he's finally straightening up with a final clearing of his throat.

"Are you okay?" She's giggling, her hand still hovering. "Look at—You've still got some..."

Something about the fresh air, he'll think: He has a little white splotch sticking on his chin, and she just leans in and laps it right off with her tongue, like she's ten years old and somebody dared her to do it. Then a second later when she lets up a faint whimper of a cough his hands go to her wrists and squeeze them in the buckling strain of laughter coming from both of them.

Before the salty swell even clears from her senses, he lands a clumsy, short kiss on her mouth. He backs away, but she doesn't, and then she lets him do it again. And this time she lets him lift her up by the waist, swinging her body playfully off the sand. A simply innocent note chimes from her, her bare feet dance a couple strides through the air, and then he puts her down smiling and backs up to splash idly through the water. They tease each other, only occasionally twining and lingering their fingers when one of them almost falls in the wet sand, chasing the tide and getting soaked up to their knees before they have to head off for the night; and none of it is a big deal, and all of it is perfect.

And this hasn't happened yet.

.

.

.

.

Jim stops by the mess, finding Uhura quickly prettied up and in her uniform already studying the preliminary announcements on her PADD with a tall glass of juice. She's alone, and he slips into the seat across from her.

"New earrings."

She automatically feels at one of the layered silver teardrops and says, "Birthday gift from Pavel."

"Really?" Kirk grins in surprise. "I'm impressed, they're very you."

She chuckles and mutters, "I'm really not that hard to please."

"I'll keep that in mind," Jim mumbles with a tone of reflective incredulity, and it's passingly apparent he was fully aware of her birthday. "So, Lieutenant. Where do you expect you'll be at 0300 tomorrow?"

"Sleeping." She lifts her brows more attentively. "Unless...?"

"I may or may not have something I could use you for?"

"Like?"

"Away mission?"

"I'm listening."

"It would honestly be pretty low-maintenance, and I really only need one other crewperson with me," he explains. "Spock's going down on S.I. One to collect some samples, and Bones is going, and we might just kill a couple missions in one evening cause I'm not needed there."

"So we'd be doing Two."

"Yeah." Jim takes a sip of his coffee and moves to get back up. "But I gotta get to the bridge; we'll have time for a sort of informal debriefing, assuming you're up to it when..."

He is casually cut off by her nodding, and then his eyes flit off, distracted; she pinpoints who is most likely approaching from behind them by the certain easy smile Jim has, and leans back in her chair returning to her reading.

"Captain."

"Hey, did you get Scotty's message?"

"Yes," Spock launches his reply like he already knew Kirk would be asking. "And I should suspect if we do not pacify his enthusiasm to try the method and the warp core actually does breach within the next _year_—"

"We'll never hear the end of it," Jim agrees as if echoing some earlier thought process of his own.

Nyota can sense the awkward pause, but then Spock surprises her by addressing, "Lieutenant Uhura...You have altered your hairstyle."

She sits up alertly, brushing a section of the long bangs out of her eyes, replying in confusion, "Um. Yeah. It still fits regulation..."

She notices Spock looking somewhat his own version of innerly flustered, and she's thinking now that perhaps she missed the point. Jim is rolling his eyes at both of them as he finishes off his coffee and starts his way out of the mess hall.

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Around the time she's expecting to hear from him, Uhura's computer alerts her that somebody is at the door of her quarters and goes to answer it. She is momentarily distracted with a cracked fingernail just as she gives the command for the door to open, and when after a second she looks up, her face scrunches slowly into amused bewilderment.

The captain is lightly smirking at her door, dressed in a crisp dress shirt which has a subtle stripe pattern under a brown waistcoat, and equally stuffy-looking pants to match; on a hanger which he holds with a hooked finger, he's carrying a dress that is more than unquestionably out of style.

She cocks a puzzled eyebrow, then crosses her arms. "Let me guess. I'm invited to a costume party in your pants?"

He snickers shortly. "Come on, Uhura, my pick-up lines were never that bad."

Resting her hand to the doorframe in a looser amusement, she admits, "I don't know if I can remember a time you even bothered with pick-up lines..."

"Yeah, yeah..."

"I'm afraid to ask: Do you actually expect me to wear that?" He sheepishly hands her the dress instead of answering.

As she's testing the texture of the royal blue fabric she backs into her room a little, and Jim kind of points down the hallway and mutters, "Uh...I mean, this isn't gonna take any longer than like ten minutes, but since it is a briefing..."

She realizes he's talking about taking it to one of the meeting rooms. "Why bother? Here, I'll get us some water..."

She gets a whole pitcher full and sits at her little desk across from him. Her room is clean and crisp and feels formal enough, but he does compliment the huge mural painting that almost covers one of her walls.

"You've never seen my quarters, have you?" She realizes.

"Why, um...I mean. No, I haven't." He shrugs.

Once she's demanded an explanation for the dress, he explains about the Iotians, their heavily imitative culture and why blending in would seemingly be the best thing if they don't want to interfere with their development any more than members of Starfleet apparently already have.

"So..." She flips through some of the data already transferred onto her PADD; "They got all of this from a _book_?"

"Apparently," Jim says with incredulous eagerness. "It should all look quite a bit like Earth in the 1920s."

"And we are to assess...how much things have changed since they were last observed?" She scrolls down to the bottom of the report. In a laughing tone, she says, "Captain, am I not seeing that this message advises you not to go there at all?...'The risk of further cultural contamination is considerably high'..."

"You read correctly," Jim confirms with a smirk.

"Oh, this...this is one of the ambassador's..." She shakes her head, leaning forward and putting her PADD down. "All his warnings ever do is pique your curiosity."

"Yeah, well. He probably expects as much."

Nyota stands, and she's examining the dress again. "How'd you wrestle this thing out of the replicator?"

"It took some tweaking. Thankfully I didn't need to make anything, nothing in formal menswear is gonna make me stand out like a sore thumb."

After looking at the garment more closely, Uhura looks at Jim suspiciously. "Did you guess my size?"

"Yeah. With a second opinion," he amended suggestively. "You should try it on, though, we have time to..."

She's already kicking off her boots. "You can just turn around."

"Um." Jim lets out a short laugh, holding his hands up innocently and already heading for the exit. "I wouldn't trust me."

She gives him a perplexed and dubious look, but just asks, "Can I meet you in the transporter room?"

"Sure."

Scotty gives an appreciative whistle when she gets there wearing it before going back to programming something, but she's cutting straight to Jim. "It has no pockets."

Jim underreacts. "So?"

She spreads her arms out, annoyed. "So where is my communicator supposed to go?"

"...Oh." Jim is holding two communicators, meaning to give her one, just now realizing the dilemma. "Okay, well. I can carry yours in my pocket, I guess."

She rolls her eyes. "Give it."

"...Wha—?"

"Just—" She's holding her hand out, shaking it for emphasis when he hesitates, and he hands one over. He watches then as she messes with the front of the dress, poking the device down into her bra. Satisfied, she looks up expecting him to be amused by that, but he's actually blushing a little, averting his gaze.

"—Bet you think that's just hilarious. I get to spend my evening with you and your_ delightful_ sense of humor..." McCoy's complaining tone is heard as he and Spock enter; Uhura notices that Jim is grinning now, as if he's been whispered something funny, already checked into Spock's subdued annoyance with the doctor, apparently. McCoy pauses, a bit thrown off by Uhura wearing the dress. "Well, look at you," he says in an appreciative laugh.

Uhura just gives a clicking noise with her tongue and a flirty, immodest shrug. McCoy makes a couple lines of conversation with her trading information about their missions, and if she overhears anything from Kirk and Spock's immediate exchange, it sounds sort of cryptically simple and formed of half-thoughts. She's gotten used to that, the way their version of making conversation is to revisit the same formal small talk but with something under the surface that's different every time. In the middle she catches Spock's expression briefly but directly trained on her, in an almost perplexed interest, while Jim is reaching to pinch a spot of lint off of the waist of his uniform. She immediately averts her waiting glance as Jim then leans his back onto the transporter pad, and she notices how he looks inscrutably pleased, smiling like someone does when they visit a good memory.

"Gotcher coordinates, Captain."

"Thanks, Scotty..."

They quickly arrange themselves on the transporter pad, and Jim is saying something to Bones across Uhura and Spock. Standing between Spock and Jim, she isn't sure what it is she senses, but it feels like some risk of electrocution flossed between the captain and his first officer, a fence trying to jolt her off.

It is not a sensation of being unwelcome, merely like someone is supposed to be saying, _Could you move to the side? I can't see._

In an automatic response to the unusual feeling of being in the same room with another officer for so long without even saying anything to them, she looks at Spock, who in a seemingly similar shiftiness nods in her direction. She looks forward, waiting for her body and vision to fuzz away from the transporter room, but she checks a last peripheral look. Spock is looking too.

The transporter engages.

They come through to land underfoot; Uhura takes a second, then forgets the previous moment in the pull of curiosity to take in their surroundings as Jim's already half-turned away to glance about at the secluded alleyway they've come out in. It's barely sunset on this side of the planet, the slight darkness toning down their sense of hesitation as they start walking out towards some street lamps.

"_Ooh_!" Kirk gives an appreciative whistling when one of the first things he sees is what Uhura gradually assumes is the Iotian version of one of the earliest automobile models. He walks out closer to the curb and bends down a little to look in on the car seat, nodding in approval. "Almost perfect. That's just beautiful...Wow."

Uhura clears her throat in a warning. He looks up rather unfazed to see the man smugly glaring at him and moving as if to get in the car. Jim just steps out of the way with a kind of sweeping, don't-mind-me gesture, only giving a little grimace in his sidelong glance at Nyota.

As the man moves to open his door though, he notices the heavy stuff strapped around Jim's waist under his jacket; the captain actually stuffed the phaser out of sight, but the communicator pack apparently looks suspicious enough. Both of the officers are surprised when the Iotian's expression lightens nervously.

"Look, buddy, sorry," he says, his eyes averting shortly down to his grocery bag. "Wouldn't want no trouble with the boss."

Jim has no idea what that means, but he cocks a bemused brow and just says, "Nobody wants any trouble with the boss."

The response seems to hit the right note of ambiguity, and they're fairly confident that the man gets away feeling relatively un-threatened after he starts the engine. When Uhura looks over to give a well-humored shrug the captain is already muttering some notes into a log on his communicator now that there are no eyes on them, strolling slowly into the street.

"Evaluating the cultural contamination" is not exactly a technically defined task. Uhura quickly figures it's just a matter of recording whatever seems like valuable observations until Kirk is content with their progress, or most likely, bored.

But for all his curiosity about the planet, she wishes he was in a more sociable mood. He's never been the type to take missions somberly and by the book, most definitely not one of this priority, and even though he laughs at a couple dry remarks she makes about everyone's clothes, he doesn't try to match them. She's surprised after a point by how seriously dull he is like this. Jim has made her all colors of irritated, offended, amused, infuriated; but never once before has he actually managed to bore the pants off of her.

In an hour—once they've collected reasonably qualitative observations of the food they're eating, the jobs they're working, the families, the arts—Jim's ready to go, and Uhura thinks she quite agrees. But from the tone of Scotty's first words over the comm she can quickly tell that's not gonna happen any time soon; as Jim's expression slowly mirrors her exasperation she's not even in the mood to ask what the malfunction is, and she's sitting several feet away on a set of stone steps with her knees hunched together when he just looks back and doesn't bother explaining in response to her cringe.

"Look, we should move," she finally says, getting up and lazily smoothing out the bottom of the dress. "At least head closer to the bars or something, I don't get the idea we're dressed to stop by the drug store..."

"Yeah, okay," he calmly agrees. When they start walking, he's looking across the street just behind her when he notices, "Oh, uh...I think your dress is..."

"It's coming undone?" Uhura panics just slightly; she still feels like a show in the strange thing and has been adjusting it constantly since they got down.

"It's coming down like an_ inch_, don't freak out."

Jim watches her scrabbling to reach the zipper behind her, finally rolling her eyes and asking, "Wanna give me a hand?"

"I...sorry." He steps forward as she turns around holding up her hair so he can quickly zip it up for her. She turns after straightening out the straps and he's already got his hands in his pockets again, looking at his feet and then scratching at his hair as he turns to start heading through an intersection.

And all of a sudden, there is nothing for it anymore: She is_ extremely_ annoyed at him. The agitation is sudden to the point of bewildering, and she has to stiffly stand there for a moment instead of following after.

"Jim?"

He's surprised to hear his first name, that change of tone, and stops, turning. With a tiny sigh of exasperation she sternly catches up with him.

"...Would you _stop_ it?"

He shifts a couple searching looks over her, all around, letting out a bit of a scoff. "...What?"

"Just—_this_—your whole...I don't even _know_ what it is, but it's getting _really_ obnoxious..."

Almost laughing, the captain stammers, "I have no idea what you're talking about..."

"Around everyone else, sure, you're worse than ever, like that crap in front of McCoy at the gym, but as soon as it's just you and me, you just _shut off _on me." Uhura illustrates with a gesture of meek hesitance, hands going up in dainty cowering...

Her bluntless is off-setting, and Jim awkwardly finds his words. "I...I mean, I would think that would be a _good_ thing..."

"Oh, it's just as obnoxious as ever, don't get me wrong. It's just..." Uhura clicks a couple steps forward, her expression frank and her voice lowering, as if there's anyone around that she wouldn't want to overhear. "Look. It happened a year ago. And it was a mistake, and I am practically thrilled that we both agree on that. But if you're going to pretend that it never happened? You might try actually _pretending_, that it never _happened_."

The two of them have not once referred to the event since she left his quarters just afterward, not to each other, most likely not to anyone else, and launching into a sudden mention of it makes Jim shifty, one side of his mouth going up nervously, until the message actually kicks in. She gives him a moment. He lets out a slight laugh, smiling.

He says, "Oh. Okay."

"Now, can we please just go find a bar or something until this transporter issue gets fixed?"

Already mostly loosened up, shrugging, he eagerly replies, "Yeah. Sure."

.

.

.

.

He is of course under the impression that they will actually be drinking at the first little club they get to, despite the fact that even buying it is illegal. This confuses Uhura until he manages with only a casual motion that rides his jacket up off his communicator pack to get the bartender to hand over the sauce, no questions asked. She's shaking her head disapprovingly when the server lays down their glasses, but then Jim has this smile like her annoyance is the reward, and she reaches for one of the glasses first.

They talk about Spock.

"How come he hasn't been talking to his father?" Nyota is asking, sipping lightly at the decent imitation that's just different enough from standard whisky to be an interesting experience.

"The best way you could describe it is that it's always awkward. Though he'd never call it that." Jim shrugs. "Last time we dropped by the colony, you remember...It was like hints being dropped left and right that he needs to get married..."

"Really?"

"It's a terrible population crisis, what do you expect? I actually thought that with him being half-human and you know, a goddamn interstellar hero, they wouldn't be trying to get him barefoot and pregnant, but it's 'irresponsible' that he's committing himself to Starfleet and all that..." Jim rolls his eyes.

"You'd think...I don't know, that they wouldn't be worried about keeping it to marriage. I know monogamy is important to their culture, but at this point..." Uhura laughs as she rhetorically adds, "What's logical about it?"

Kirk is nodding in amusement. "Right? I know. I don't even get how all of that is handled, considering how completely un-romantic everything else is for them. I actually tried to ask Spock about it once? He completely avoided the question."

She has a little knowing cringe as she says, "Did the same with me."

That really surprises him for a second. "No shit?"

"Yeah." She sits back for a second, smiles as she remembers something. "Hey, what was everybody talking about after that mission the other day?"

"With him, you mean." A grin breaks out on his face. "Ah, you kinda had to be there. Basically there was this street merchant who kept bugging the crap out of us...The third day we were down there, the moron actually grabbed his hand to try to get his attention, and Spock nearly erupted right then and there. For just a _second_ he looked like he wanted to punch the guy's lights out."

A contained amusement has painted over Uhura's features while he's talking, and he cocks his eyebrow for an explanation. "Nothing, it was just your word choice. 'Erupt.'...I knew some French even when I was little, so the first time I heard the word 'vulcan', I thought of 'volcano'..."

Jim seems to like that. He mutters something about, "_Notre petit volcan_..."

She smiles again. "I didn't know you learned French."

Looking idly for something to comment on, his eyes stray with a pleased look at her hand wrapped around her drink. "_Tu a les mains élégantes...Les plus belles doigts, tu sais_?"

"_Beaux_," she corrects. "They're masculine—"

"No, they're not."

She can't help a giggle. "And I'm gonna let it slide that you used the personal form, since I don't remember the last time you flirted with me."

She's surprised at how strongly he rebuffs that with a scoff. "So you want me to do that '_vous êtes_' crap with you after that lovely pep talk we just had? And that wasn't even flirting."

As soon as she seems unsure what to say to that, though, he forgets it.

"Okay, let's do this," he says, clicking his nails against the table briefly.

"You first. I can't think of anything."

"Um." He reaches carelessly in the air for a question. "What language that you don't know would you most like to learn?"

"Oh, um..." She snaps her fingers trying to remember the name. "Yliran. Have you heard of them? They communicate entirely in facial movements."

She's surprised by how much that interests him; he's putting down his glass and looking off distantly, thoughtfully. "_Seriously_?"

"Yeah. What about you?"

"I don't know if I could learn _that _one, but I'd sure like to try." They both laugh.

She thinks for a while. "You should come up with all the questions, it's hard for me to think of ones that are good for both of us."

"Okay. Uh...If you could relive a year of your life, which one would it be?"

"...That's hard. I bet you already know this."

"I'd rather go forward, honestly, but if I had to, any year of being captain...Uh. Just not the first...several months or so," he adds with a suggestive cringe.

She sets her chin on her knuckles, thinking about it. It's not the kind of question she wants to answer flippantly. "I think the cutoff would have to be six months ago."

"...So this year?"

"No, up till then." She shrugs. "Not the easiest time, but I don't wanna just say when I was six years old or something like that."

"Definitely not," he agrees, but he gives her a slanted look. "Bet there are some things you wouldn't like to repeat, though."

"I have a question." She is suddenly more sure of something she wants to know. "What do you want?

Leaning over the table, Jim blinks, then picks up his tall glass and pensively gulps some of it down. "Just, what do I want?"

"Yeah."

"...That's a strange thing to ask somebody like me."

"Why?"

"Cause...I don't know, life's funny." He waves the glass for vague emphasis as he explains, "The less you have the more you want and then when you get it, you still want more. I don't know, I'm a pretty lucky bastard from where I'm sitting. I've got everything I need and most of what I want; I'm not gonna sit here and moan about the rest."

"What's the rest?"

He pauses, licking his lips, looking narrowly at her across the little table. "Why are you asking me this?"

"I thought you wanted to get to know each other better," she replies flatly. "How much have you had to drink?"

He shrugs, pointing at his empty glass.

"Just that?"

"What the hell...Were you hoping for impaired judgment?" Jim laughs low for a second. "You can ask me anything you want, you know. I just don't really know what you mean."

"It's not complicated." She's almost laughing. "If you could have anything you don't have, just one thing, what would it be?"

He immediately replies, "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"I'll try," she insists.

He speaks candidly, with sentiment but without self-pity; he shrugs and answers, "Knowing me, there's a perfectly good reason I don't have it. But sometimes I think I wouldn't mind...having somebody around. You know, like...for good."

Her confusion is non-judgmental; it's a reflex, and without even thinking she asks, "What about Spock?"

"Oh, well..." He's fervent in explaining, "He's great, he's beyond irreplaceable, he's a good friend. Everything with him is in some ways better than I ever thought it would be, and I guess having him instead of that is..."

"Instead of...?"

Then his eyes are filling with more confusion and maybe slight embarrassment. "You honestly don't know what I'm trying to say here?...I mean, as a Starfleet captain, it's all part of the package, and it's not like I want the whole marriage and kids thing, but..."

And all at once, before she has the chance to play it off right, he realizes what she is actually trying to ask. He laughs, very shortly, before he meets her horrified look of embarrassment and the way she's dunking down the last of her drink like, _There goes that_, and he seems quickly struck with what really isn't funny about it at all.

By the time he splutters out, "_What_?...You thought—?" she's already leaned back and pulled her hands over her mouth.

"I'm sorry—I—"

"Lieutenant—" Jim bites out, leaning forward in his chair, "Pardon my French, again, but what in the_ fuck_—"

"Look, just forget it—"

"_Uhura_..." Jim's trying not to actually shout after her when she gets cringing up out of her chair.

"I'm just gonna go for a walk, okay? You can comm me—"

But he follows, getting out of his chair quickly but now attempting to calm down, his next comment making it seem less like she was the one who wanted to leave. He just slips by her sighing, says, "Come on. We're not having this conversation in a bar."

Uhura's hesitation is one of nervous surprise then, because from what she knows about Jim Kirk, he is never the type to volunteer a serious talk about anything outside of his professional concerns. Suddenly she's got a sick pang in her stomach like her mind's going on the defensive, responding to a vague panic. They keep walking until they get half a block down from the pub where the buildings look more like homes.

Then he turns on her and says, "Alright...Okay. It's been a really long time since he and you called it quits, and I can't believe I'm the one to straighten this out with you, but what in the hell are you imagining was the reason it didn't work out?"

Immediately uncomfortable, she kind of glares back and says, "Look—I can't talk to you about this. Not if you're going to act like you were there."

Kind of ignoring that, Jim shuffles his weight between his heels for a few seconds, becoming more anxious with her by the moment. He finally rolls his eyes and says, "Look, princess, you could either tell me to fuck off and go away or you could just get over the fact that we're friends now, and you_ can_ talk to me..."

"Okay," she interrupts weakly, drawing in a breath and crossing her arms. She manages to mechanically say, "He had his limits. And I wanted more."

He doesn't need her to translate; he readily steps closer to her. "Okay, and...judging from what you just asked me, you think those limits have somehow changed now?"

Uhura looks at him almost bitterly. "Maybe you've never been through a break-up—okay, you've probably never even put yourself in the position, but people's limits do change depending on who they're with."

"—Jesus," Jim exclaims, and for the first time, after the countless forward and flirtacious moments that have ever been extended from him to her, his absolute inability to grasp this is one of the few unintentional compliments he's ever given her. "Look...I can swear to you, up and down, that to the extent that he is capable of wanting somebody, you do one hell of a number on him."

She can't help relaxing a little, but her eyes narrow back at him. "You know, you talk about him like that a lot. And you wonder why half the people on the ship think you two are an item."

"You're not half the people on my ship," he corrects. "You should've known better."

"Well, I know that there's_ something_, and I don't know if I can explain it. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one who notices..." Uhura shrugs weakly. "Whatever it is between the two of you, I can't really get over the idea that he moved on_ to you_, in one way or another..."

And well, they've gotten to the topic after all, so he sighs in a slight bit of dread before admitting, "Okay. There is something I ought to tell you..."

"Here we go."

"Calm _down_, okay?" By now there's a good gap of distance between them, as Jim always paces around during conversation. "It was something like a year ago now, right?...After I slept with you, I needed to tell Spock. You probably figured that at the time."

He is so forward about it, she can't be offended by him flatly bringing it up. She nods. Still, he's uncomfortable with it, and he explains with a sort of impatient loftiness.

"The problem, I guess, was that it could so easily have not been a big deal. I could've never told him about it, or I'd tell him and let him indifferently stand there telling me how he had no valid reason to care, and that just felt all wrong. Because I knew he'd care, in his own way, and I almost wanted him to be mad, but I wanted him to _understand_..."

Uhura lets out a sudden long breath, her hands covering at her face for just a couple seconds. "Oh my God..."

"Yeah."

"You offered to mind meld with him?!—Just—?"

Jim shakes his head with slight regret. "I know. I probably should've asked you. But...I don't know, maybe in a way, we are kind of an 'item.' This ongoing thing started then, I just sorta got a kick out of it, and we're loosely linked a lot of the time now—"

"—_What_?" This is the most alarming thing to her yet. Her expression is gaping as she shakes her head at him. "You just...I mean, of course, it makes perfect sense, but wouldn't he—"

"Yeah, I mean, he tries to convince me now and then that I shouldn't be comfortable with it, but he never actually says—"

"Well, it's not like he's a _toy_, Jim..." She's shaking her head tightly. "I mean, that's a huge thing in their culture...The fact that he's willing to do that with you, it's like—"

"He's given up on marriage?" he interrupts flatly, which practically confirms that it's true, he's considered this before.

"And you didn't even know..." Uhura was biting her lip in disbelief. "That was part of the problem, with us. I wouldn't do it, and he wanted it so much. And then you just passively offered it to him like it was nothing, while _I_ couldn't even—"

Nothing she's saying is anything Jim doesn't know about, she can tell, but he's one thought ahead of her, and resistant. "No, don't. Don't think..."

Uhura starts anxiously pacing a few steps farther down the road; he follows. They're getting more away from the lights of the town, into the block of an orchard with a slightly sweet smell.

"Uhura," Jim calls insistently, and then catches up and gets her by the shoulders. "Would you listen to me? He's a Vulcan, you're_not_. That kind of connection, it's not something we're equipped with or used to, and maybe I'm kind of a weird fucker for being comfortable with it, I don't know. You like your privacy, and I bet you don't even like the fact that the control over it only goes one way...He gets that. And you know this."

She steps out of his arms a little tiredly, crossing hers over her chest, unable to resist the knee-jerk reaction of bitter embarassment at his surprisingly sophisticated level of understanding; it was somehow easier when she could accuse him of knowing next to nothing about all of this. At the same time, though, his is an outside perspective, and also a reassuring one. Having always cringed at the thought of actually talking out her feelings, she simply left the issue in the dust a long time ago, and there were still shreds of the whole mess she couldn't quite cope with.

She's standing close to a veiny brown tree, almost shivering in the cold now, and they've come to kind of a stop. Jim has his lips pressed together, thoughtful, also looking just slightly wounded or at least annoyed. He finally quietly protests, "I don't treat it like a toy..."

"I—I know," she immediately replies, slightly regretful.

"He was pretty lonely after it was over, you know."

Her eyes narrow in a kind of confusion. "...Are you being accusing? Or—"

"—No. No, just, maybe I don't get why you don't talk to him anymore."

"I talk to him," she protests, but his dubious look makes her sigh. "Well, it was just strange around him afterwards and it never worked itself out. It's not like I consciously pushed him away."

"Yeah, well." Jim shrugs. "He misses you."

Her expression is peeling into something else, sad but delicately wanting to smile. "No, he doesn't."

He kind of rolls his eyes. "I can't imagine how it's any easier when you're not friends anymore. Anyway, it's not a toy, it's not like I'm taking advantage of something, it's not like it doesn't help him out just a little. And it makes me...happy."

He sort of shyly says that last part, and she gives him a curious look.

"Well...yeah," he admits, shrugging, "You have to understand, that it's a challenge. It's not like I'm reading his mind all the time. The first time we melded, I kind of expected to get like, waves and waves of...stuff. But when he's not in certain emotional states, it's all kind of placid, and it took me a while to realize that one kind of placid means he's a little annoyed, and another means confused...I didn't think I would ever start to get it and be able to really read what he's feeling, but once I got the hang of it..."

"It's like learning a new language," Uhura offers quietly.

"Well...yeah," he agrees, a little uncomfortably.

"And are you pulling my leg?" she suddenly demands. "Does he still think about me?"

"Maybe not in the way you mean..." In response to her look of exasperation, he's suddenly frustrated with her again, and his words stumble out more aggressively. "Look, I just know all these different things and they collect and then they just converge into facts—One of them being that he really misses you sometimes, okay? I just get this feeling from him like everything's safer when you're around. And I get it in the pit of my stomach, so don't tell me I don't know how he feels about you. Fuck, I could probably kiss you exactly the way he would if he was capable of that—Of _really_ kissing you, I mean..."

That flippant but also oddly impassioned declaration isn't intended to do anything, but it winds up something in her mind, makes her expression relax from its serious near-glare into something of an amused sneer.

"...What?"

"I'll have you know that Spock and I kissed many, many times."

He just shrugs, his expression launching back, _So?_

With her arms crossed again she kind of looks him up and down, and her face scrunches up and she laughs. "You really think so?"

Responding to the joke, the challenge, he's more playful now. He smirks and shoves his hands in his pockets looking all mock-offended. "Damn right, you got a breath mint?..._Baby_?" She just laughs again, and he grins back more Jim Kirk than he's been in many minutes, lighting up with some inner satisfaction.

And so they're joking now, so Jim scratches his chin, turns and paces over to a pile of narrow wooden crates and snags one. She watches him, smiling in confusion, as he scrutinizes the narrow breadth of it, a size just right for storing something like tangerines and not much else. With the air of a gentleman he comes back and tosses the crate bottom-up at her feet, inching it closer and closer to her and standing on it right in front of her, then holding out his arms and saying, "_Voila_. Tall enough?"

There is something so damn charming about all of it that Uhura's grin glows behind another nervous bout of giggling in response to it, as she brushes a little good-humored slap at his arm. He composes slowly from a tacit smirk to pressing his lips together so that he doesn't break into her mood.

"Alright, come on," he mutters lowly, after he knows for sure that she's not going to tell him to stop playing around. "No laughing."

Somehow, when she clamps her mouth tighter and slants her eyes up to look at him, she does stop laughing. She stops smiling. A silence builds and thickens fast, like the breath of wind let in by the opening of a door. Some insects are teeming a song way off in the abstract.

Instinctively, after Jim takes a nervingly calculating look over her face, Uhura looks down as if timid; the wild hum is joined by the 'V'-sound of a silk tie unfastening its rich friction in the darkness. He moves with a barely-there smile to fold it around her eyes: Here she relaxes again, but not like she's about to laugh, as he wraps it just twice around and then ties it loosely behind her head.

After that he doesn't touch her at all, for a moment. And for a moment she feels a nothing happening that brushes delicately and powerfully against her. With every second, a blind uncertainty teases and unfolds her senses, leaving her peeled open and weightless and completely devoid of anything but anticipation in the hollow pull of breeze and dark and a hint of his breath she feels against her forehead before he seems to maybe be holding it. Maybe it's a conscious manipulation of her reaction on his part, something to give it a kick.

Or it could almost be something else, like summoning something from outward or upward that is outside of himself, remembering and constructing from phantom neurons he's housed in his mind before. Letting everything flow into one mindful and mindless purpose before he lets his self go, and...

There is nothing particularly jolting when she first feels lips press kind of chastely against her mouth, a nose resting closely against hers in a way that is distantly familiar in its clean symmetry. The pressure is slow, pleasant, as hands cup around her bare shoulders in an efficient, affectionate grasp. She purses and accepts; their lips duck back a bit making the first little noise, go in again in the same way.

After the second and third time, going purely automatic, she does it with the slightest widening motion that he follows naturally, lips brushing to the sweeter moisture. Then with her actions disconnecting from her thoughts just enough, she pushes herself into it a little, tilting the angle of her jaw to kiss more widely, more fully; as she'd always thought of it, a kiss should be more like a sentence than a word or half-statement, and she "says" something inviting, inquiring.

He pauses for a moment as they're still openly joined, and when she pulls back then, she brings him with her; and his tongue and his breath and _there _it is, something against her like someone just now understanding what God made mouths for: His is hungry and clumsy with passion, and the two hands reach to firmly cradle her cheeks into a steady deep rocking, sliding further into a rhythm now...

She hears herself gasping as the raw sensation roams down her body, muttering at places untouched; she's feeling at the tree to let her back rock into it without it scraping her. He leans over to prop an arm above her, lips returning to graze with teeth this time, his breath thickening against hers as one of her hands moves up his ribs with a mindless asking pressure. His left lowers from her face, grazes down her neck, and then is working a firmer path that pulls suggestively at the top of her dress where the slightly softer skin begins.

Then her sharper breath isn't easy to interpret, so he stops.

In the next second Jim's using his thumb to press his tie up off her eyes. His voice is almost not there:

"Are you okay?"

Whatever knee-jerk mutter tells him she's fine just then, she realizes when something happens in Jim's eyes looking straight at hers that he just pulled her shields right off; when the tie came off her eyes, she was all naked underneath. Well, she sort of thinks, this is interesting.

For one thing, she's fairly certain, for no easily definable reason, that Kirk has just realized within a matter of seconds that she is still in love with Spock.

For another, she's just realized, within a matter of seconds, that she is still in love with Spock. She would mockingly laugh at herself if her senses weren't limping all over the place in a way that was kind of nice less than a minute ago and is only frustrating now.

Jim Kirk. It always comes back to him in all the wrong places, only right now, she notices, right now he has this look like he thinks he just screwed up again. And if she can do anything, she can make that stop.

Tiredly, affectionately, Uhura reaches and gives him this little pull. "Come here."

He is hesitant, but he's stepping off the board and kicking it aside, searching her with his eyes. He isn't sure what she could mean, but at the same time they seem to be naturally poising slowly back together. With her hand still at his waist, it's like heads meeting pillows, their lips just tapping into a slow sipping desire for one blurred second that's never punctuated before his communicator chirps static from his pocket, some delicate syllables giving away Chekov's shy tones. He extends one limb behind her so her head rests on his forearm as he gets on to talk with his other hand; she's sighing down, her hands rested at his sides, her glance falling to their feet.

He abruptly pulls away before the response is heard back. He's almost businesslike now as he mutters, "We gotta go."

He probably knows already that she'll wind back out of it and pretend it didn't happen, and the ship, she'll never know. These things could only happen on land.

When they beam back up, the other two have been back for almost an hour already, but Spock is there to greet with his hands clasped behind him. His and Jim's eyes meet and the captain is briskly making his way off the pad ahead of Uhura, who follows at a more tired pace.

"I thought you might want to finish our game," Spock is saying to Jim, who probably gives a mere smile in reply, already caught up alongside his first officer.

Then at the door Spock hesitates, neutrally looking back at Nyota.

"Captain," he asks, "do you not wish to retrieve your tie from Lieutenant Uhura?"

She stiffens, shoulders tightening up in a sudden rush of self-consciousness. Jim looks like he wants to laugh at realizing that his tie is indeed now wound loosely around her neck like a scarf; she removes it in a couple clean movements and hands it over with a tight smile. He just easily smirks, tossing it around his own neck, saying, "Thanks."

That night, once she's showered, she pulls out some of her old personal logs. She was encouraged to keep a journal growing up, to vent out the ugliest of her emotions in order to make better sense of them, and as a result that's for better or worse she tends to keep a bustling database of cryptically bitter outbursts she doesn't even remember composing. She skims back to nine months ago, a little grimly fascinated at the blunt, lazily suggestive and sometimes unfinished entries that make her feel like she's entertaining some awfully passive-aggressive double of herself.

There is one of course that isn't just about Spock, that she stares at unblinking for a few seconds before she rereads it:

_**2259.3  
01.13**  
All of us on the bridge were right: No way the captain would scream like that unless it was something hurting like "ten kinds of hell," as our CMO colorfully explained. Whatever it was killed Ensign Baker, and the poison was probably for the purpose of incapacitating Kirk to save him for later. You couldn't make this stuff up. I was just outside the transporter room when Chekov located and brought him back._

I heard the anguished groans before I saw the stripe pattern of lacerations all the way up his leg, and I must've said something like "Oh God," the way Sulu was looking at me like he hadn't taken me for the squeemish type; next thing I knew Spock was there, in the way he manages to be in places where he has no rational reason to be. He as good as told the captain to shut his mouth and preserve his energy, automatically moving to deftly help someone else get him onto the biobed. One of the nurses was shouting for something right across Jim's heaving stomach, but nobody really noticed...

I'm not sure what it was. Just one forehead rocking briefly forward to meet the other like a substitute for a rushed embrace, Spock's eyes shutting in a nearly imperceptible breath of relief over a man just barely coherent enough to return the expression before flopping back down

**01.21**  
This job is a nightmare sometimes.

I'm glad Jim's okay.

.

.

.

.

The late morning after she walks swiftly onto the turbolift, hearing a friendly dispute between Kirk and McCoy before she looks up to give them the best greeting smile she can manage on an empty stomach and not enough sleep. Jim's assumption that she's headed for the mess hall before he presses the button for her without asking is the most he does to acknowledge her as she shifts by to lean against the back banister of the lift, a little caught up as he is in some story McCoy's telling him.

"—the guys there didn't even know if he was serious..."

"Yeah, yeah..." Kirk is widely grinning after a second. "That's pretty funny, actually."

"Yeah, I bet you woulda laughed it up," McCoy replies, disarmed out of his grumpiness by Kirk finding the subject at hand so amusing. "You would've thought Spock did it intentionally, though."

"Well, of course he did." Jim only now catches Uhura's eyes in the way of eagerly inviting her into the conversation.

"Yeah, right. The guy wouldn't know a joke if it hit him with a two-by-four."

"Of course he would, what—What are you talking about, he makes jokes all the time." Kirk seems newly humored by what he considers a massive oversight of the doctor's. "It's all vicarious with him. He can't laugh, so he makes jokes. Other people do it for him."

Uhura rather slowly kind of eases from eavesdropping into cocking a kind of meaningfully amused glance at the captain as he seems to be turning to look for some validation from the back of the lift.

"Did you tell Spock what happened on Iota II?" she suddenly asks.

She has to stifle her smirk at the captain's reaction, which spurts and flusters only very shortly before settling on stupid puzzlement.

She plays this pretty smoothly: Kirk knows that she does not mean precisely what she says and McCoy isn't sure what the hell is going on but doesn't quite care. She says with just the right note of meaning, "We were laughing pretty hard."

Then Jim very slowly grins. "I...No, I hadn't thought to tell him."

"What?" McCoy asks. "What was funny?"

The door opens onto Nyota's floor, and she's looking at neither of them and grinning cleverly as she nudges by, picking up Jim's too-long hesitation and flat reply just before the doors slide shut behind her:

"...You had to be there."


	3. Occupational Hazards

A week goes by without it really feeling like anything has changed, but the awkwardness between the two of them that constrained them throughout the year is somehow completely erased. Kirk makes a joking pass at her a couple times and it's playful revenge for her catching him off guard on the turbolift before. Just something under his breath, an overdue compliment on her haircut while he's waiting behind her at the replicator. She rolls her eyes at him and gets on with her work, thinking that at least they're done apologizing to each other.

Two weeks and it hits, this thing that comes gnawing straight out of their blind spots like a hungry shark and has a terrible quiet way of posing its threat, and all of the distance is off, everything they understand about each other comes out onto the table in a blunt cringing way.

And none of it actually matters the day that Spock goes down for an away mission with two ensigns and comes back very, very sick.

That is the too simplified and straightforward version of it that reaches the bridge. A second later Kirk is gone and an hour later there's still no more news except for a murmer going around that nothing that happened on the planet had anything to do with it.

A lot of people care about Spock. Everyone on the bridge, McCoy, some of the rest of the crew: for someone who does not conventionally welcome friendship, he has quite a handful who would call him a friend or at least care enough to be a bit on edge waiting to find out about his condition. The captain can go where he likes, especially where his first officer is urgently concerned. Especially when the entire crew has seen him arbitrarily throw protocol out the window before to protect his closest friends; he's proven he has a very different definition of responsibility than anyone who would tell him that he shouldn't be where he most likely is.

_Still_. Every minute going by without anyone hearing anything seems to confirm that something is seriously, seriously wrong. She knows, the first chance Kirk had he'd be comming the bridge to let them know, letting _her_ know, if they'd figured out the problem. The way things are going, it doesn't seem like they even know what's going on. She simply can't imagine _sitting_ here, and maybe people will understand, but another part of her is absolutely dreading getting down there and...

She jolts as a hand goes onto her shoulder. Chekov is casting some looks back and forth, leaning his lower back against her console. "...Hi."

She just replies with an unsettled grimace.

Pavel has his own slanted penchant for bucking protocol and usually getting away with it just cause he's Pavel. That attitude is evident along with the casual concern in his expression. "I could fill in for you."

She leans back with her arms crossed, still and uncertain.

He seems to understand her reasons for hesitating. He just makes a soft empty question of a friendly nickname he would usually call her in a more joking tone: "Nee-nee?"

"Okay." With the decision she's out of her chair quite fast, adjusting her hair nervously as she heads for the turbolift and presses the button. She's then alone, waiting anxiously for the thing to open up on the right floor. She's going to kill Kirk. She's going to kill him, if he knows exactly what's going on and hasn't...

She makes it into medical and in a short span of time, she notices the air of tense chaos in the room with no kind of explanation attached to it, just a sort of fearful groaning exclamation she hears before she sees Kirk pacing tightly in front of McCoy where they're located a good distance away from the closed-off bed with the only current patient; and he notices her and starts in a quick flinch over to her. His expression says it before she can think what she needs to ask, and she's shaking her head a little as they kind of naturally back themselves away.

Her voice is hardly above a whisper, so McCoy probably doesn't hear. Just, "What, what is it? God. Please..."

Jim's voice is gravely as he stammers, "We don't know. We don't know, it's so fucked up..." He's raking his fingernails at the back of his neck.

She starts with, "What happened?"

"Apparently they were down there, he was acting a little irritable one minute, the next...kind of angry, is what Tellerman said, but then he was just gone. He's not responding to anything, he doesn't—He doesn't seem to know what's going on, he's just—"

McCoy has come over closer to them and he interrupts in a note of fierce complaint as if against the situation for daring not to make sense to him. "His body is practically attacking itself with these chemicals, it seems—hormonal, but the level of stress on his body, it's gonna kill him if we can't stop it in the next few hours, if even that..."

Jim practically whimpers some curse at that, and Uhura is only composed enough to half-acknowledge that McCoy is practically glaring at him in an uneasy impatience (_What the hell are you doing, man, keep it together or I won't be able to either)._

"What do you mean—what do you...What do you mean, 'hormonal'?" Jim moves his jaw in irritation at his own difficulties in constructing a sentence, seeming to try really hard to speak slower. "If this is just _him_, why isn't he—"

"That's the thing..." McCoy's eyes dart down in what Uhura thinks is a brief look of deep guilt. "Before he went, I was giving vaccinations for that virus, and there was a warning in the order that it might have hormonal side effects for Vulcans. And I warned him, but he obviously didn't think it could do anything like this...It's like it stimulated something that didn't exactly need stimulating."

"But you don't know what that something is," Uhura says.

His eyes meet hers, hollowed out with frustration. "...No. Whatever it is, it's not in the comps, and we don't have time to contact—"

"_Bones_," Jim interrupts. And he has nothing to say.

They all stand in silence for a moment, and McCoy returns to the obscured bed; Uhura walks farther back to the sick bay entrance, scared to even witness what's behind that curtain, to hear him breathing. She senses that Kirk is sort of gravitating after her, but not about to say anything, as she has her back turned to the rest of sick bay.

And then suddenly her eyes pop wide, and she says, "Oh. Oh wait..."

"What?" Jim demands.

She hesitates for a beat. "I need to go get something."

"What are you—"

"Don't—just shut up, I don't know if it is anything, just wait here."

She's never run to her quarters so fast, but she gets there, snatches her PADD off of her night stand, and the whole time she's on the lift trying to find what she's looking for she's thinking, _Please oh God, please, let this be something, let this be something, let this be something._

It is something.

.

.

.

.

After an absence of under ten minutes, the sound of Uhura's boots thudding down the hall precedes her return; a frantically bemused Kirk looks like he's about given up on her. He's even more anxious now, pacing several steps back and forth just outside medical and leaning into a table to grapple the end under his torso within waiting on her approach. She makes her way, out of breath and looking less than consoled but somehow very certain about something. She hands him a disposable PADD reader of the mail messaging variety.

"What is it?"

"All that information the ambassador gave you? He sent Spock some things too—over the course of a month or so after we left Earth—And at one point he sent something along asking him to give it to me. Spock probably assumed it was practically a greeting card, but it was supposed to be really important, only it said...I probably shouldn't look at the information until..."

"Uhura, what is this?" Kirk snaps, finding little satisfaction in attempting to concentrate on reading the somewhat detailed message, just dropping it dismissively down on the table. He is impatient, irritable, not nearly as calm as he usually is in handling the most dangerous situations that come into his lap. Uhura flinches indecisively, then goes for grabbing his shoulders and turning him sternly in her direction.

"If you want the abridged version?" Her voice is oddly shaking. "He's in heat. Yes, shut up. Shut up and listen to me, because he _is_dying..."

"...What," Kirk lets that one bit of shock hiccup out of his mouth before complying.

"It's usually over the course of three days, but if McCoy is right about the drugs, he's going through it much faster than usual, and judging by his condition, he's in the final stage, which isn't good—He may not have much time..."

"To...?" She realizes now that he's a bit shaky too, more like_ trembling_...

"To mate."

"Oh. Oh. Jesus..." He looks down at the PADD, back at her, realizes the implications of all that and realizes, "That's really...This is extremely complicated."

"Is it really?" Uhura replies, flatly. "Seems pretty straightforward to me."

"So you're gonna do it?" he asks. Just like that.

She's looking at him with an inscrutable bitterness underneath all the anxiety. She bites her thumbnail with slight panic and finally stammers, "He—I mean, an older version of himself gave me this. But now we haven't been...and I just don't know..."

"Uhura," Jim spits out, grabbing her meaninglessly except for want of getting some form of reassurance out of her. "You're telling me he's seriously going to _die_—"

"Ow," she grimaces. Her wrists are clutched in his hands with a sudden painful force, holding her arms rock-still with a tense strength. "Jim, _stop_, you're hurting me..."

He looks down as if only now realizing he was touching her at all, and immediately lets go, muttering a bewildered, "Sorry." Then he leans into the table for support, his whole body looking somehow wound-up and weak at the same time; Uhura slowly pulls in a breath.

"Oh my God."

He looks up, whining out, "What?"

"Why didn't you tell McCoy you feel like that?"

He quickly shakes his head. "I don't know what I feel like—What the hell does it matter—?"

"—You're linked with him right now!? Didn't you figure this out?" She scolds him further with a brief grip at his forearm. "It's like it's happening to you too."

As if he needed some outside confirmation that something definitely was going wrong inside of him to be able to show it, Jim lets out a seemingly pained groan and then a long muttered line of meaningless swearing. "The connection's really loose, though, I didn't know..." Jim shakes his head and casts a look back toward sick bay. "God, if this is what he's feeling right now, this...This is_hell_...It's not like you'd think, it's like it—_hurts_..."

Uhura's eyes become cooled in thought, looking to the side before decidedly meeting his face. "Jim, I think you need to..."

A half-word of a yelp comes out of Jim's mouth as soon as he registers what she's saying. "_Me_...?" He looks like he could nearly laugh, but he doesn't.

"Can you?" she demands seriously.

His expression is suddenly deeply serious, his tone almost bitter. "For him, yeah. But if you think that this—"

"I don't think anything except that you've been playing bond buddies for longer than I was even involved with him and maybe a Vulcan would consider your experience with Spock decidedly more intimate than mine, but if you don't know if you can do this I'll be damned if I'm going to stand here talking through it while he's in there _dying_..." She moves as if to go into sick bay, but Jim grabs to stop her.

"Wait, wait. I'll do this, okay. I mean...I'll try. If it doesn't work—"

"I'll be waiting to hear from you," Uhura confirms, her mannerisms softened with a kind of relief. "Are you sure?..."

"Look, it doesn't matter." Jim is putting on lighter airs, awkwardly waving away her words. "It's just...weird. Is all. Are you okay?"

It is a very strange question. And all she says is a stiff "Thank you, Jim" before stepping in to give him a kind of squeeze on the shoulder.

A nervous breath is felt on her forehead, and Jim is unsteadily joking "Maybe you should keep your distance," his hands gesturing in avoidance of her in reference to before. She steps back with a tired frown, and leaves him without saying anything more.

She walks steadily back to her cabin without looking behind her, retiring into her off-duty clothes. Once changed into a tank top and sweats, she pulls out her desk chair and sits, cradling her face in her hands, reeling in silence. Her heart hammers wildly in her chest; she prays not to hear the comm signal slice through the safe silence, and after a good amount of minutes isn't sure when she can feel assured that she isn't needed for this. Something in her is stiffly thankful when another seven minutes goes in the absolute silence of her cabin.

She gets a glass of ice water and drinks it down quickly, pacing back and forth in her room, trying not to think of it, the thing that is happening, but surely fails at this considering the amount of contemplation she is now forced to inhibit on why it even matters. She is not going to check the stardate; she is not going to go into her old personal logs looking for every moment she recorded in it what she thought at the time was some flicker of attraction—No.

It's just that on top of everything else, she is overwhelmed with fear that somehow, Spock is too sick, it's out of their hands and he is going to die. And this is not the time to be nursing her renewed heartbreak, but it's not the time to even bother trying to suppress it either. She can't fathom how her head was on straight enough for her to even consider asking Jim to step in. She'll never know the either/or of it now, and there's the inescapable fact to deal with, that they made a choice between the two of them. Aside from his brazen willingness that simply had to do with saving Spock, she doesn't know how much of this is Jim being noble rather than conveniently taking what he wants, doesn't know whether he actually saw how much of an emotional curve ball it would throw straight to her gut to have and lose Spock a second time. He stopped her from going into medical earlier almost as if he knew.

After she sets the empty glass down, she entertains very briefly a memory of what bizarre thing started with an invitation for a glass of water in his quarters over a year ago; a scoff escapes her as her spirits stretch to embrace that comfortably distant, now completely benign sexual mishap. The longer she thinks about everything, Jim is where her mood gets the lousiest with a sense of pointless loss. It's so irrational, because she has a choice in this, but she can't help feeling it: Tomorrow, once things are different, she is really going to hate him.

There is nothing to do but wait. She eventually drops down onto her bed with her eyes to the ceiling above her and doesn't dare to watch the time pass. When a sense of hesitant calm starts to settle into her bones, she numbly sings an old jazz standard out to the static of the room. There's a note in the bridge she can't quite hit; she backs up to try it again but her frail voice cracks, and then she just grunts in restlessness and swings herself up and out of bed. She walks over and grabs her communicator off her desk, resolving to get some coffee since she knows for sure no one else will be in the mess at this hour, and she just needs to get out of her room.

Once she has the cup of coffee in her hand she finds herself just staring at it for a moment before she actually takes a sip. She's setting it down to cuff down the slightly loose waistband of her pants, when the door slides. She picks up her cup and very slowly turns.

Jim has also changed, but sloppily. He looks terrible.

"I tried comming you, but I thought I'd just come and..."

"Well?" she demands.

"Sorry—He's fine. He's gonna be fine."

She manages to ask a rational question. "Did you have to tell McCoy everything?"

"No, actually. I managed to convey that he would probably _prefer_ it on a need-to-know basis," Jim mutters dryly.

"But he's fine. Everything's fine." Uhura seems to be saying it to reassure herself, but he nods. There's something missing in his expression, but she's tired, and she decides to dump out her coffee, and she heads for the exit without caring to analyze Jim anymore. She just wants to sleep.

.

.

.

.

The next morning, of course, she's weirdly anxious about what Kirk and Spock are going to be _like_ when she sees them. She kind of expects everything to be exactly as it was before, but she can't help being curious about it when she hasn't seen either of them before her shift starts.

She ends up nearly walking right into them when they're crowded around the corner just outside the turbolift, and catches only pieces of them talking as she passes by. It sounds like Jim wants some records he thought he'd already asked for; Spock is confused for a second, then understands. Etcetera. She reports to the bridge and gets on with it, not heavily thinking about what happened again until Kirk is included among the group she sits with at dinner, and Spock isn't, because he's in his quarters. She takes the opportunity to lean over and ask, "He's okay, right?"

Jim blinks in her direction, a little slow to reply, "Yeah. I assume so."

He_ assumes_ so. This is a significant statement, and she cocks an eyebrow in questioning. The captain just twists his fork in his pasta, a wan smile on his face she doesn't quite understand.

If she didn't know that she was probably overanalyzing, it would be easier to analyze. But of course something is a little different with Spock and him. It's an awkward grasp on each other they didn't have before, and maybe they just need to adjust to it. The rest of the crew are only remarking on how if you didn't know any better you'd never guess Spock has just gone through a cranial infection ("Nice, McCoy," she muttered to herself, grateful that no one was going to be trying to snag any rumors from her); if there's anything different about the captain and the science officer, it's not a brisk enough difference for people to pick up on. She doesn't know, she doesn't worry about it, because whatever it is, neither of them seem _unhappy_ with the other.

Except, that doesn't last.

It isn't quite a week later when Spock goes down for another mission Kirk is sitting out on to let more ensigns gear up on experience. Jim is clearly massively regretting this when Yivae reports back unsteadily about Spock being taken captive, presumably as a hostage, by hostile inhabitants. Jim's barking a couple orders that Uhura eventually does not hear; all she knows about and can think about for a few seconds when it happens is the red blipping bordering, the "TERMINATED" that shows up only minutes after over a life module that her mind is screaming in denial cannot be placed under that name.

She doesn't manage to say anything. She opens her mouth to report and nothing comes out. The very second that Jim notices the way she's stiffened up he's shooting to the back of the bridge, his voice bent with worry: "...What? _What_?"

She feels his hand clamped around her upper arm when he comes up. She turns to look at his face, and she sees what crumples in on itself in his expression, what gets filed away for later, before he shuts down and goes in for it, deciding what he's going to do.

She's seen enough things happen since becoming a high-ranking member of Starfleet that she thinks qualify as miracles, to only be ninety-nine percent astonished when, long story short, Spock is somehow transported back in one whole piece only twenty-eight minutes later. He hasn't had time to explain why he is alive: Before he can even volunteer to do so, Jim is a step ahead.

"You tampered with your life signs emitter," the captain states, his voice flat, his expression pulled in the same tautness, the same oddly accusing look of _not a-fucking-gain_ he's had on since the Vulcan's voice came tinning over the comm.

The rest of the group that came to greet him are all befuddled, pulled between their happiness and relief and a confusion over the grim sense about Kirk, who has never quite talked to anyone like this before.

"You tampered with your life signs emitter," he says, "so that we wouldn't come to find you."

Spock is a touch more hesitant than usual to respond, but he only gets out, "Captain—"

"You wanna give me a good reason I'm not trying to knock you into the floor right now?"

This appears to Scotty and the couple ensigns to be a cue for needed privacy, and they leave, giving each other scandalized looks.

It doesn't even occur to Uhura that she could possibly walk out the door.

Spock finally moves to step down from the transporter pad, but doesn't go farther than the bottom of the stairs; Kirk is still looking at him like he's waiting for an answer, and he stops with a kind of tired look.

"I took the actions I deemed necessary when I became aware of the Romulan presence on the planet and calculated the probability that my captivity would be used to orchestrate an anti-Federational ambush. Surely you realize that you took an extreme risk and put the entire crew in danger by coming to the rescue of an officer who was presumably dead—"

"And if I hadn't had an inkling that you might pull something like this, I'd already be noting your merits," he responded icily. "You expect me to accept that as an answer, that it just doesn't matter what happens to you? You are second in command of this vessel, Spock, you do have some responsibility to protect yourself in these—"

"I have explained to you that the ship and its crew would have been greatly jeopardized had I placed my priorities in the manner of protecting myself—"

"So you go far enough to _patronize_ my protectiveness, you accept that, but you assume that I can handle whatever hell comes at us afterwards without my _first officer_?"

Spock replies with a growing edge of nearly condescending hardness. "The crew is more than equipped with personnel who are capable of taking over my position in the instance that something happens to me, as it should occur in the instance that I would otherwise risk your lives. I will not overlook that fact because my _captain_ is experiencing emotional difficulties..." Spock's voice actually trails off, his eyes moving from irritation to hesitant frustration.

"Go on?" Jim demands.

"I believe...you are projecting recent circumstances onto our current situation—and—if I may, it seems you are not speaking to me as my superior, but as..."

Jim catches on, and then his face crushes into this bitter smirk, a raspy snicker coming out of his throat. "Okay, well, I can't believe I'm able to say that you brought it up, but okay. Fine. Let's talk about that."

From where Uhura is stuck nearly motionless near the door, her body senses the quaking in Spock from how he, for once, is almost shamefully silenced.

"Oh, but you can't," Jim says sourly. "You can't talk about that. It's easy. Try it: 'Captain, you should be aware that I am overdue for this'—"

"Please—"

"—'this thing, and that we need to get in touch with the Vulcan colony, because if I don't take care of it, I could DIE'—"

"Jim," Spock flatly insists, "I had no certainty, being half-human, that I would experience—"

" 'No certainty.' Are you fucking kidding me?" Jim spits. "I honestly did think, after everything, your bullshit Vulcan pride had deflated just a little bit—This? Is the last, _thing_, you have any room to be ashamed of."

A bit severely, but with an undercurrent of something far from angry, Spock states, "I will not allow you to imply my logical weaknesses while you are in such—"

"Yes, Spock, you better believe I am in a god damn_ emotional state_." The snapping in Jim's demeanor makes it seem like if he had anything to be throwing across the room, it would be in pieces. "Aside from you pretending to not understand what it would've done to me—to Uhura?—if you'd died for such a_ stupid _reason...And you know that it's all relative, because I can't think of much of anything, really, that I wouldn't do for you; what I did today was worse than that..." Jim gestures to his right temple with a finger before finishing off, "You didn't just not tell me this. You_ kept_ this from me. Now, I swear to you: If you don't find some basic instinct for self-preservation in that skull and start watching your own back, I am going to find myself a first officer who can."

Spock knows better than to try any more, and Uhura thinks he probably knows what he'd like to say but can't imagine saying it out loud. As Kirk moves from next to the programming board to fidget his way out of the room, she's reminded rather vividly of the other time she saw the two of them get in a fight, how the aggression and the noise was mainly troubling in what it was covering up even when it had come down to Spock trying to throttle Kirk when they'd hardly known each other. She feels too familiar with that now, when Jim passes by her and she just stands there, her expression creased with a kind of helplessness. He catches it in her eyes with a tense avoidance of it, not angry but aversive with her as he leaves without saying anything more.

It feels like she and Spock are on opposite ends of the room. She manages to straighten her shoulders and look directly at him, mostly in curiosity, wondering why he hasn't moved. He's looking down at the floor, considering. She moves as if to start leaving when she hears him say, "Uhura?"

With a good amount of distance still between them, she stops and looks calmly over.

"I was wondering if you would impart your...opinion on these circumstances," Spock quietly says.

She feels herself bitterly almost smirking. "You want to know whose_ side _I'm on?" she asks in a note of disbelief.

He gives that thoughtful half-dubious tilt of his head. "You have a remarkable sensitivity for the complications of human emotion. I wonder at times if the...loss of the more intimate stage of our relationship has distanced me from a more sophisticated ability to deal with..." And then his voice fades off like he's realizing he doesn't know what he's asking.

She crosses her arms. "I really don't think I have to spell it out for you. He's nearly lost you twice in too short a time, and your actions are only telling him you don't want him to depend on you. And whether it's what you really meant, you showed you've lost confidence in his decision making in the process. Sorry, but you should maybe think a little harder if you don't understand how going after his competence and his vulnerability in one sentence might just sound to him like a huge 'Fuck you' after everything that's happened."

Spock's face doesn't do much besides trying not to show how much he's thinking through that. "...I see."

She realizes she's still breathing so fast, the adrenaline still surging through her nerves. Suddenly she opens her mouth to speak, but he does it at the same time, and instead of saying anything or waiting for him she's marching forward without even thinking. She walks up and grabs him around the waist, pulling him into her grasp, his shirt into her fists, tightly. She buries her face at his chest and closes her eyes and she doesn't want to see or hear anything else.

He's taken aback, wobbling on his feet, but in a few seconds she feels his arms around her in an achingly comfortable way, one hand going through the layers of her hair softly. When she backs up enough to look at him, that confusion just nibbling at his features is still, she swears, one of the most beautiful things she's ever seen. His eyes are also questioning, voiced gently as he regards her uncertainly and says, "Nyota...?"

She lets go of him; and she turns around and walks away, while she still can.

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.

The door to Jim's cabin is unlocked and set to auto, so Uhura is able to walk inside feeling unobtrusive enough. The room lights are all off, but the door to his bathroom is open illuminating a bright 'V' all along the carpet. She hesitantly follows it, trying to peek in enough to make sure he's clothed.

He's shirtless but still in his uniform pants, finishing up shaving, wiping a towel at his jaw and chin. After he rinses and nudges the towel down he's wiping a drop with the back of his hand and that's when he catches her in the mirror, and goes still.

It suddenly hits her how strange it is that she's there, and she can't think what to say, as his head turns to look at her in confusion. For some reason all she can think to do is step in and lean her back against the threshold and say, "Hey."

She's trying not to look like she came in here to feel sorry for him cause she knows what that will get, but he almost looks annoyed either way. "Hey," he replies blandly, looking back into the mirror and grabbing his toothbrush.

"Holy shit," she suddenly curses, unable to help herself as she notices a huge bruise at his lower back. She just says, "Did _he_...?"

He realizes what she's looking at but just dismisses it irritably. "I don't even remember."

Almost like he's expecting her to just leave then, trapped in a daze where that would make the most sense to him, he looks at her again after a second and puts his brush down.

"What do you want?" he suddenly demands. His tone is kind of suspicious and she doesn't understand why, but there's also a general incapacity to realize any solid reason she should be standing in his bathroom.

In response to her increased speechlessness, he just shakes his head apathetically. She's suddenly overcome with a restlessness, tired of him brushing this off at her. She steps over and reaches a hand out before she knows what it's about to do, just wanting to give some reassurance; in a jolt, he's turning and grabbing her wrist and backing her up, pinning her in the corner between the sink and the door.

"What? What are you doing?" he snaps.

"Nothing," she says, weakly imploring, not knowing what to add besides, "I'm sorry."

He takes in and lets out one breath, and then softens out at the edges, backing up, his expression regretful. He looks a little bewildered with himself as he says, "You should leave."

He walks by her into his main quarters, orders the door off auto and starts to take off his boots. She's inching her way through the darkness as he finally drops onto the bed and just lies there, presumably not planning to change out of his pants.

Some kind of barrier makes her unable to just walk out. She kind of naturally falls into stepping over to the bed, going over and sitting down at the foot. She can't see his expression, but he moves so she can push herself over to sit against his headboard with her legs primly out in front of her, her hands on her lap and him lying next to her. As her eyes adjust to the darkness, she sees he's looking at her in some questioning way.

"I'm just going to wait here for a while," she explains. "There are plenty of people still up, and I don't want to be seen leaving your cabin at night."

"...Good thinking, I guess." His head lolls down on the pillow, but she knows he isn't yet falling asleep.

After a moment she only manages to repeat, "I'm sorry."

She hears a resistant breath come out of him. "I don't really know why you're saying that."

"I feel like I shouldn't have asked you to take care of it..."

"That's ridiculous."

"I know. But I had no idea at the time...Well, I thought it would be much different for you."

She can almost feel it, being unable to see it, the discomfort creeping into him again but then leaving, replaced with a tired acceptance of that vulnerability. He knows she knows; he accepts it with a soft sigh.

"I almost feel like I could've warned you of what it's like. I know you know him better than I do, but...I wish someone could've told me how fleeting the fleeting moments would be. But I probably wouldn't have listened. It's so easy to lose track of how it could actually be a bad thing for him to feel a little too much, but it's like he falls off the wagon, almost, when he loses control. Sooner or later he always has to get back on."

"I know all that." There's a motion, Jim pinching the bridge of his nose. "But for the first time I just can't quite fucking understand why it has to be that way."

She anxiously scratches her hand against her uniform for a second. "All I know is he tried to strangle you the day he realized how much he loved his mother. And that he sometimes contemplates how it might've been if nobody had stopped him. And you probably know that; but would you believe that he never again kissed me with quite the amount of feeling as he did that day? I should've figured that would happen, but I watched it become a little less the next day and a little less the next."

She lets the silence go for a second before sighing and recounting, "One time the two of us sort of had this friendly debate, about Nero...How somebody like that could be the perfect example of how emotions can be destructive, because he was acting on the loss of his family. And I thought we were talking in the abstract, until Spock brought up the fact that he was so willing to kill him because of what happened to his mother. And I realized that through the entire conversation we had really been talking about him."

"...When was this?" Jim absently asks.

"It was a month or two before we broke up," she replied simply.

Suddenly she realizes she's exhausted; she doesn't even feel like walking to the door, being blasted by the brightness of the corridor after adjusting to the dark. She leans up into her legs, reaches down to shuck her boots off, drops them onto the floor. Jim hasn't gotten under the covers and he doesn't say anything as she lifts them over her, feeling less self-conscious about the possibility of falling asleep that way.

After some silence, the cozy drowsy mood moving over her causes her to mutter something of a joke: "You think we'll ever end up in bed together when it has nothing to do with him?"

She wonders, when Jim's head tilts up to look at her, if he's dissecting, scrutinizing the thought process rather than the comment itself. Because after a long hesitation he mutters, "Does that matter?"

She apparently falls asleep before she can think of how to answer.


	4. On Land

When she wakes up momentarily disoriented to discover herself in someone else's quarters, Jim has left out a bagel for her as well as a message that she can take as much of the morning off as she wants, also parenthetically advising her to leave somewhere within the hour of nine hundred if she's worried about being seen. She wouldn't have taken him for one of the 'didn't-want-to-wake-you' types. Not that that would apply to this situation, but the thought makes her dryly grin as she discovers also that he's folded out a towel for her to use.

She tries to convey a teasing manner of gratitude with a smile once she runs into him on her way to report to the bridge. He's talking to McCoy and only spares her a wink. He looks a little bit better, she notices, but there isn't quite the level of energy behind him that she's used to.

What she witnesses that day seems like a good sampling of what she can expect to see between the captain and first officer, until the indefinite time that one of them makes some push in either direction. By the late afternoon they're working together efficiently, in a way that would seem like a perfectly beneficial dynamic by someone who didn't know either of them at all. There's something too cold and businesslike about it; before, Kirk would cut off what Spock says as if he could gracefully read the other's mind, but she notices that day that when Jim finishes Spock's sentences it's more like he's trying to end the exchange as quickly as possible. Their interaction, whether tinged with conflict or affection, has always been heady, potent with something; seeing them interact in a strictly professional by-the-book way is all off, and she just knows the rest of the crew has to have noticed.

She and Chekov play badminton before dinner, and before he even has the chance to bring it up she can see she's being studied and she warns him with a sigh, "I don't want to talk about that, okay."

He sardonically mutters, "Yes, ma'am," before making the first serve.

.

.

.

.

"I guess this is about those messages..."

"Do you want me to just keep avoiding them?"

"Yeah. Look, I'm sorry, I hate making you play secretary on these things..."

"We all have parts of our jobs we hate," Uhura says with a shrug. She's sitting on the table in the smaller dining hall that is usually only used for formal meals but seems to have a quicker replicator. "Or really hate...How are you doing?"

Jim's at least not sourly rebuffing her sympathy again, though she did manage to ask in a tactfully broad and casual way. He takes a sip of his ice water, pondering it over; she catches a hint of herself in there, that continuous mental fugue that makes self-diagnosis a little intangible. She didn't really have to ask anyway; he and Spock aren't at each other's throats by any means, but she's starting to think it would almost be better if they were.

He finally manages to answer with a dull lack of confidence, "I guess I just have to keep telling myself it'll work itself out eventually."

She's put her PADD down and is leaning back on her hands now, and her face falls to a heavy frown. Without warning, she feels immensely sad for him; it seems to put a defined edge on a general feeling of unsettlement she's had all week.

She sits up now, slowly, clears her throat. "Um...You know what helps?"

And she's off the table, walking up to him. She stops close and presses her lips up to his in a kind of testing sweep of his mouth, not really knowing what he'll do. There's a centimetering motion of hesitance, but he reacts with a lifting surprise she senses even with her eyes closed. When she does draw back and look up at him, he's blinking, unsure. He looks around for just a second; she knows what he means, as if he's asking, _Here?_

She replies by gently kissing him again and then backing up to hop back onto the table. He follows along, but still looks like he doesn't understand what they're doing; she grapples him by the waist, hugging him in between her legs, kisses him deeper. She's affectionately satisfied by the noise of startled pleasure it draws out of him. He leans forward, resting his palms on the table just behind her waist, stealing eagerly at her skin with his mouth, at her neck and her jaw, but he says, "What's going on?"

"You want to?" is all she asks. "Or—"

"You're the top xenolinguist in Starfleet and an A-level at almost everything else, Uhura, don't ask stupid questions..." Jim's only irritant with the uncertainty of the situation, his body held stiffly in hesitation.

Finally she props herself back enough to look at him frankly. Her face dissolves into something more familiar and soft than he's probably used to getting from her. Maybe she even looks sad. "Just..." She sighs, and her voice goes even quieter as she presses one knee assuringly against the side of his leg. "Make us both feel good, okay?"

He's leaning slowly back forward and nibbling on her ear then, and then he whispers, "My cabin. Twenty minutes."

Her hair is down when she goes, not bothering to be conscious of the traffic in the corridor just outside when he opens the door only having taken off his jersey and looking every bit in his reaction like he hasn't even seen her today. He waves her in with a casual comfort that would look to somebody else like she came by to borrow something.

The lights are already quite low, but he doesn't spend much time in his quarters and that seems practically _status quo_. As she enters he's darting into the bathroom, maybe rinsing his mouth out, still acting in every way like she's just a lunch guest. She lingers by his desk close to the door, brushing a hand over it but not quite leaning against it, and when he comes out of the bathroom she's sort of smirking faintly.

"Twenty minutes." She's realizing, "You wanted to make sure I didn't change my mind."

He doesn't answer. He's walking briskly forward and then he's kissing her and kissing her and kissing her, hands at her waist, her breasts, the mood suddenly heightening as if they've been at it for minutes already. She sighs, reaching at his collarbones and then up and around to give a claiming squeeze at the back of his neck, pushing her tongue into the mouth that moves soft against her, feeling her clothes and his coming off without any meditation until they're both in their underwear.

He's managed to slowly dance her in footfalls over to the bed, which lightly taps at her calves before she lets herself fall back on it. She sits up enough to unhook and shrug out of her bra, encouraging him to shove down his black boxers. He's about to work himself forward onto the mattress, when she remembers something. Her voice is faint and sure: "Computer, low lights."

It's good for her, all of this. It's like a really good book or a multi-vitamin or learning to conjugate Andorian verbs, the way he looks at her, fully aware that he wasn't allowed to before. He doesn't make a spectacle out of her while she's stretched on the bed in front of him, but he really, really looks, and her skin feels hungry all over with the way he slowly hooks down her panties and peels them down her legs. His hand caresses at her knee and then moves up with the rest of him as he crawls to tangle over her.

She doesn't expect it at all when his head reaches hers and he tilts his chin against her ear and just very quietly groans a kind of yearning exclamation of "_God_."

"—Mmmp," is the only response she manages, feeling her body curl up to his as her breath becomes feather-light, excited. He's looking at her then, grinning, and he massages at the back of her neck as he pecks and sucks and playfully bites along her jaw.

"Mmm?" he asks.

"_Jim_," she whines, a little irritated and teasing.

He chuckles against her lips and then, after a firmer kiss he settles there, continues to ignore both of their eagerness, his eyes suddenly lingering in fascination at her right hand rested on its back where that arm is paused in anticipation; and his head ducks in an almost reverent way to plant, slowly, a kiss on the sensitive underside of every knuckle, pressing those fingers to the sheets with a different sort of devotion to every one. By the time he gets to her pointer, tonguing and drawing it between his teeth only teasingly, her other hand is working up his arm and down his back, both soothing and urging, her hips rocking up to him. Her breaths are short but sure and they calm to a heated noise when he arches his body back up slightly, enters her slowly.

He sets the pulse a little slow, pulling emotion from her in the throes of something unexpectedly and unbearably sweet. This is just fun between two friends, this is a whole different game compared to what happened between them before, and it shouldn't feel the same at all, only she manages to realize how well she remembers over a year ago because of how this could certainly be more unlike how it was then: the way that Jim doesn't quite bother with being in control as much as she would have expected, the wonderful stutters and clumsiness in how he moves with her effect on him and how she _sees_ it now, the broad wonder flipping on in his eyes like he's never seen her before because she's making him feel this good. It's odd to realize that she had some kind of set idea of what he was probably like with most partners, that maybe it's nothing like she imagined; there's a sport in the chase, the flirting, the undressing, but the sex is somehow unrecognizably not about him. Here, he forgets himself; it's the only place he ever is where he actually wants to lose. It is, in fact, _really_ good.

It was always nice with Spock. _More _than nice much of the time; it was different in a pretty magnificent way, and she even loved the lack of attention to more petty notions of beauty, anything like that. But somewhere towards the end of their relationship she felt her heart gnashing fruitlessly for some vague thing it never found; she went through denying it and being a little ashamed of it for a while, but she couldn't help a restless longing for some completely irrational fire. Every other relationship she encountered, every book she read, every moment she felt her own heart falling harder, she wanted to make somebody stupid, she wanted someone to just lose their mind over her, for only a second. She resolved that she was young, still needed to experiment with more casual relationships, went on the occasional dates, but they weren't quite it either.

And now here's Jim Kirk, who shouldn't have any business making her feel so pretty, so powerful, who she's realizing now maybe always has, in a very small way. And if he's really feeling any small sense of what she has through his immense frustration with Spock after what happened, maybe she's doing the same for him, and it may not be real, but it's good, and it unhinges her somewhere in her chest when she starts gasping out his name more times than she could count as she's complaining for her release. He lifts and twists into her until she crashes along a rough groan, his breath becoming closer to yelps and his mouth landing a soft bite at her neck that makes her half-wonder if he's trying not to utter any real words back.

She ends up with her chin snug in the corner of his neck as he shudders and then recovers limply over her in long gasping breaths; she combs her fingers kind of soothingly through his hair, lets him rest for half a minute squeezed against her. Finally he just lets out a little hum and moves up, reaching down to pull the covers over them. She tucks herself into a loose cocoon, but her head rests comfortably against him.

He casually glances over the sight of her legs woven in and out of his comforter, lets out another pleased chuckle. His head turns into hers a little; he elusively mutters, "You smell amazing, you know."

She just snickers warmly.

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.

.

The next day at lunch she pauses in her steps for only a moment before turning to set her tray down and sits across from Spock. She just smiles, blowing on her tea in silence for a moment before either of them says anything.

And they begin catching up. There isn't much to tell that isn't already known: Everyone who works on the bridge, for example, knows that her favorite aunt died a few months ago, and being in hearing range of McCoy's bemused remarks about Spock makes it hard to miss out on his extracurricular research endeavors, but hearing it directly from each other is something even he seems to understand the value of.

After a few minutes there's something deeply warm in Spock's expression that makes her admit that Jim was correct, she should have fixed this so long ago. After all this time of wishing she'd been able to get away some place where she wouldn't have to see Spock's face every day, kicking herself for not realizing that that was the risk she'd taken being with a member of the crew, she realizes things might have been a lot less hard on her if she just hadn't let talking to him hurt so much.

That's the same day she gets an impromptu cabin call from an anxious Jim, who immediately puts a PADD chip into her hand when she answers.

"It's everything Spock, he—the _other _Spock—sent me," he quickly explains, interrupting her question. He almost seems out of breath. "They're _my_ logs. From where he came from, there are hundreds of them, I'm not supposed to...peek, or anything, it's just for research, in case of emergencies, but I keep..._cheating_, and it's really fucking me up, and—Could you please just hold on to it? Promise you'll only give it back to me if it's for a very good reason?"

"I...yeah," she stammers, slowly taking it and setting it on her little table next to the door.

"Thank you, Uhura."

"Wait—"

He's started back, but he slows and turns to look back at her.

She's leaning into her doorway, nervously smiling and giving a little scoff. Her expression slowly turns soft in the ensuing silence and he takes the few steps back, and follows her inside, and she pulls on his shirt until she's standing flush against him, waiting for the slightly sheepish smile before she kisses him.

.

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.

He comes by when she and Spock are sitting together the next day and Spock is not so much playing chess with her as giving her suggestions on how to possibly beat Chekov. Jim asks him if he can go over some reports he filled out that day for the upcoming trial they're appearing at.

"Certainly. Are there any specific concerns?"

"No. Not really..."

"I will contact you within the evening," Spock replies, a little too simply.

Jim opens his mouth as if to say something else, then squints in uncertainty, scratching a hand at the back of his neck as he then takes a quick survey of the game on the table. He blankly mutters to Uhura, "Don't fall for that 'C'-five," just as he turns to walk away.

Spock's eyebrow lifts at her as she seems a little annoyed at the suggestion, now very uncertain what her next move will be. He apparently heard it, and adds, "That would be a wise course of action. However, if you were to—"

"Don't tell me how to win, tell me how I was about to lose," she says, insisting on the more instructive explanation, which he pauses and then gives her, in much detail.

And then they start a new game. Uhura is slightly tenser in her scrutiny than before; she's had a slightly irritated demeanor ever since Jim came by the table. He notices. "If something is taxing on your concentration, Nyota, you have little hope of winning."

She just responds by momentarily leaning back, giving him a tired look that means he probably knows exactly what's bothering her.

Spock moves one of his rooks, and his expression stays fixed sort of anxiously on the squares, but his thoughts are somewhere else. "I was wondering," he states, slowly, "if I could ask you a query."

She says, "About Jim?"

He looks up at her and barely gives a nod.

She makes her next curt move before she replies, "The answer is yes."

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.

"You need to make up with him."

"Mrm," he grumbles.

"...Jim."

With a sigh, Jim emerges from the bathrobe she's wearing, rests his ear to her chest for a moment and then drops onto his back next to her with a grudgingly sobered expression. She turns over to rest her arm loosely along his stomach.

After a considering moment he just manages to respond: "I'm not exactly on the outs with him."

"How long has it been now?...It's all wrong, you two being this way."

"I'm glad you two are talking again, at least," Jim mumbles under a hand itching at his face. Quietly, he finally asks, "How is he?"

"...Lonely?"

"If it wasn't you I was talking to...I'd go on about how fun it was thinking he was dead or dying and practically being mocked for it later. But it is you I'm talking to. And I'm kind of amazed you don't even want to whack him one."

"You'd be surprised," she intercepts a little grimly. "I don't know, maybe one of these days he'll miss you badly enough to sort of apologize. He may not even be sure what it is he needs to apologize for."

"Vulcans do not apologize," Jim flatly states.

"Sooner or later you're going to have to realize it wasn't completely his fault, you know."

He sighs, looking a little bitter, and she thinks he's missing what she means. She keeps remembering the way she kind of snapped at him before, when they were figuring out what was happening to Spock, acting like this is what he was getting into being so close to him. Like melding with him was just playing with fire. She can't really deny that she felt that way at the time, but it's hardly fair now.

"That letter from the ambassador," she starts to explain, "it had this whole practically encyclopedic section in it—It's far too taboo for them to publish anything about it, so he must have written it himself. Maybe he just figured I'd want him to be thorough, you know?"

Jim half-chuckles.

"Anyway, there was something in there about how married Vulcan couples will...sometimes use these herbal drugs to induce it at an ideal time. And I know a lot of plants they used to grow on Vulcan are used all over for pharmaceutical purposes..."

"...Yeah."

She sighs. "The point is, he had every reason to assume, even when he did assume it might happen, that he'd have more time to figure something out. And if you don't think it was tough for him being caught off guard, he's going to have a great time explaining to some how he basically had to half ass it with somebody he isn't even betrothed to. And severing that bond is a whole other taboo, they have probably an hour-long ritual for it. How long did it take with you? When did that even happen, I wasn't expecting you to no longer be linked afterwards..."

"It was like ripping off a bandage."

"...That fast?" She furrows her brow.

"Everything was fast," he cuts off simply, but then he explains, more hesitantly. "When, uh, when we were done...I was panicked, I knew it was just going to be humiliating, and he just hears me thinking this mess of 'Stop stop I want out.' I didn't exactly ask. I was just freaked out. He thought I was probably violated enough already, so he didn't think to protest, he just did it."

She looks at him just kind of sadly, almost with a look if disappointment, and flatly echoes, "Humiliating."

"Huh," he laughs nervously. "There are things I'm too proud to let him know. I don't know how much he's even going to remember since he was all..." He made a hand gesture vaguely illustrating some blind mental chaos.

Uhura stares forward, slowly realizes, "He must have felt immensely guilty, if he didn't even know..._God_, Jim, why wouldn't you_tell_ him...?"

"The only person who has ever been seriously involved with Spock came to me unrecognizably fucked up the night it was over." He looks at her briefly, meaningfully. "Even putting aside how much that kinda freaked me out, you expect me to take advantage of you and then go off to reap the benefits on the other side too?"

"Did you ever consider how that might have been exactly how I wanted you to feel about it?"

Slightly troubled by the suggestion, he carefully says, "Yeah, but not the way you_ intended_ me to. Out of curiosity, did you?"

"I don't know. I've thought about it a lot. And I don't know."

"You think about it, huh?"

"Maybe."

"I don't."

They fall into a long silence, and she's looking over at him, thinking through everything she's just been told. "...What was it like?"

He leans up a little to look down at her, making sure she really is asking what he thinks she is.

"With him. What was it like?"

The fact that she dares to ask seems to merit some form of response; he uncomfortably shifts it around in his mind for a while. Finally he says, "Half of it was horrible. Half of it wasn't. You ever have a dream that's so good you wish you hadn't had it at all?"

She already knows what he means, and she's looking away as if shyly apologetic that she even asked. She sits up against her headboard, crossing her arms over her chest. He reaches up and brushes a cheering touch down her cheek before she realizes she looks a bit distant.

He sits up too and clears his throat. "So tell me."

"Tell you what?"

He shrugs. "Anything, I don't know. About you and him. I'm curious too. How you guys got together, all that."

She sighs in and out, pressing her fingers to her lips as she thinks back to something far and untouchable. "You pretty much were there when we did. I mean sort of." In response to his look she says, "Of course we had a _relationship_ before then, but...The only times it crossed a certain line it only happened cause I was too much in denial of my feelings to realize what I was doing around him. I knew I was his favorite student. And then it was clear to everybody I was his favorite_ former _student, and we...kind of had this uncomfortable conversation about how maybe we needed to back off. But neither of us actually took it to the point of implying that the presumptions were completely incorrect, and_ God_, my hands were shaking when I got back to my room, I remember playing that conversation over and over again in my head. The actual realization that he maybe didn't feel nothing for me was almost terrifying. I wasn't ready for that."

She pauses to laugh at herself a little.

"I remember frantically comming my mother telling her I was falling for this man I knew I couldn't be happy with and I don't even remember what she told me I should do. And then Nero happened and none of it mattered anymore. We were in it," she concluded, shrugging simply.

Jim is still with thoughts for the next moment, like he isn't sure if he wants to say anything. After a minute, though, her own ruminations result in an angular, unexpected thought that catches a bit awkwardly into the silence.

"He would always tell me how I affected him. He would _tell_ me, and I _knew_. I knew how he cared for me." Her lips pressed together. "But at some point I didn't really feel it anymore. I know I really sensed it once, I'm sure I did. But that feels like such a long time ago."

Next to her Jim leans forward a little, sighing, rubbing his eyes into his fingers for a moment.

"And then there's you. It's like the opposite of that with you..." Nyota's voice now is crisp but just barely connected to any focus in her eyes. "Maybe, I don't know, some part of me knew it might be something totally different the night after it was over. I can't_imagine_...but yes, maybe that's why I pushed so hard when you weren't having it, to see if you'd give in when you knew better. You know, I wanted to be worth being as reckless as I was with him, or something."

He can hardly believe any of what he's just heard. His exhaustion mulls his astonishment into a closed dismay. She nearly senses that she's remarking on something in himself he wasn't even aware of.

"I feel—" Her voice trails off with a shake of her head. "With you, am I ever going to know?"

He finally looks at her, defeated and hesitant and confused, and very quietly replies, "But you never asked me for anything like—"

"No, no. I know..." She clutches his hand, as if trying to tell him it's nothing he ever does wrong, exactly, but it doesn't seem to make him feel better about it.

There's something bittersweet, gently fleeting and possessing, when he leans over then and kisses her, full and pure and long, tasting something he loves for the lonely sake of it. And he very slowly peels his mouth away and lingers to whisper, "I should go."

He shifts off of the bed and puts his pants and shirt back on. When he looks at her again, she's tying her robe and standing up after him with a tired smile, not meeting his eyes for too long at a time. There is a comfortable predictability when she goes over to him, leans up and in to give him a kiss on the cheek, high up against the bone. All he does is let a hand glide her hair out of her eyes with an easy enough smile.

"We both have shore leave tomorrow," he finally points out casually.

"Yeah...I don't—"

"I know, I know." He nods. "But we might run into each other. I'm just saying, if we do. Let's just...try to go a day without actually talking about him, okay?"

She wants to laugh. "You actually think we can?"

"I guess we'll find out." Shrugging, he returns a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, and then with a final quick squeeze of her hand, he turns to leave.

.

.

.

.

"_Nee-nee_."

She rolls her eyes across the table at Chekov. "You're always calling me that now."

"Vatever gets your attention, look, it's your turn."

She shakes her head, coming out of her daze with a mutter of apology. After a second of examining their game, though, she just sighs in slight annoyance. "You're kicking my ass here, why do I even bother?"

" 'ey, Pavel!"

Chekov exaggerates a pestered look at Sulu a table over.

"Are you taking leave?"

"No, ah've had too many sick days."

"That sucks," Uhura mutters.

"You never hang out vith us anyway, vhat do you care?"

She flicks an unused game piece across the table at him in response to the teasing.

"Blue sand, man!" Hikaru exclaims. "How can you miss that?"

Uhura furrows her brow. "Blue? Must be some crazy geology, I'll have to ask Spock about it before we go down."

Pavel is cocking his eyebrow, giving her a meaningful look. She shakes her head, only a little annoyed.

"We're not back together."

"I—I did not say anything!"

But it is not the kind of shore leave that makes her want to question how the sand is blue, when it cushions and melts between her toes, sticking to her legs under soaked pants hiked up to her knees. The late afternoon is all laughing and giddy screams, feeling like there's nobody for miles around, her and Jim's arms sometimes clinging around each other like the soft slap of damp cloth, and their legs are too lazy to swim.

What it is when they do this is not pronounced, but as they're walking back and she tastes some of the salt water in her mouth and still feels an imprint of Jim's fingers twining comfortably through hers, she feels a sobering pang of bittersweet mingling at the edges of the day's dizzy happiness, a whirlwind of something ending and starting over at the same time. Like they're taking something and putting it down and leaving it underfoot, grounding but not burying. Christine Chapel cocks a slightly astonished look at the amused, easy sight of them when they approach the patio table where a handful of officers are playing cards, but Uhura makes no move to pretend it's anything it isn't, asks if she and Jim can join in.

Scotty is running some tests on the new navigation systems in the shuttles, so some of the officers opt for a leisurely trip with a view instead of beaming back up. It's not surprising that Spock has volunteered to help with the diagnostics instead of enjoying a shore leave, but Uhura and Jim exchange looks at noticing that McCoy doesn't hesitate to comfortably strike up a chat with Spock as soon as he's sitting behind the pilot's chair. McCoy has been complaining about the strangeness of Kirk and Spock's apparent tiff ever since it all started and probably hates to worry the rift. But it puts it quite out in the open, that McCoy has always cared about Spock and would miss talking to him, and Uhura thinks the surreal quality of it can only emphasize what's missing.

Sitting next to her, Jim sits quietly and looks almost miserable.

The pilot abruptly veers them up when Spock is far in the back checking one of the screens; his body is jerked over and he trips a little, and his grasp falls bluntly to Jim's shoulder to steady himself. A hand clumsily pushes at one hip to help Spock's balance, and as he's straightening back up he just barely utters, "Sorry."

"'t's okay," Jim mutters just as automatically.

The strangeness of both their words doesn't go missed in Spock's eyes, and for only a second he looks down at Jim, his hand on the captain's headrest. And he turns to head back up to his seat.

.

.

.

.

It all could have gone even worse if Uhura didn't have a tendency to unconsciously eavesdrop on transmissions when her shift feels slow. This particular day would be a lot more interesting if she was actually in a position to interact with the Vulcan merchants who they come across quite by coincidence on their way to inquire about some dilithium purchases in the same sector. The conversation between Spock and their leader that occurs on the bridge is of course a bit stiff and too formal. On the other hand, a conversation she's picking up some only slightly distorted fragments of over one of the other ship's channels seems to be somewhat lewd in nature.

It takes her a second to even properly react, and then Uhura goes a bit still before putting on a face of 'Well, how peculiar' and turning to call Jim over.

"Sir," she says quietly, "I know this is probably presumptuous, but I've just caught what I could have sworn was a...Romulan word, over the channel..."

"Uh, Lieutenant..." He's leaning an arm against the console just next to her, and now he narrows his eyes and laughs a bit cynically. "You may have saved us a lot of trouble before by telling the difference between Vulcan and Romulan dialects, but I don't think I need to be notified every time you overhear anybody using a Romulan word..."

She leans back into her chair, glancing over in a look that might appear to be embarrassment to the sharp-eared visitor who cocks a brief glance her way from down next to the navigation chair, then looks back at the viewscreen. "Sorry, Captain, I understand," she replies flatly, but then she's looking at Spock, who is now observing from his station as if picking up on something being wrong.

Jim catches Spock's glance.

He reaches up to his head, as if he has an itch, just briefly touching at his temple under his hair.

The visitor is asking Jim a question about their plotting system, which he casually and politely answers, while Spock crosses the bridge with his hands primly behind his back and with a guarded understanding in his expression; Uhura realizes quickly enough what it means.

When he reaches Jim and Nyota, he starts asking her to do some routine check, and in the first chance they can be certain no one will be looking for a few seconds, he reaches his hand up and touches it to the points on Jim's face.

Uhura is tossing an anxious glance across the bridge as it happens; all she perceives of it is a reflexive intake of breath, Spock's attention turning in sudden but steady awareness. And then, when she looks up, of Jim's composure for a second just stumbling forward closer into Spock's space as something seems to bounce through. The back of her chair sinks under the clutch of Jim's right hand as his other reaches at its own instinct to clutch Spock's wrist when it lowers, just grabbing for a flinch as if he needs it to stand, then letting go.

There is an emotion searing in Jim's eyes that he quickly shakes out of, and the other two are equally focused on figuring out a way to talk, probably all summing it down to the best of the small number of soundproof areas in the ship. Uhura makes a decision and gets up casually, heading for the turbolift. Jim is following as non-obviously as possible as Spock already formulates some excuse to the visitor to lead him elsewhere. They're on the lift together and it's hissing closed, and she turns and whispers, "Formal lounge?"

"Bingo." It's private, but not too obvious, and not a place anybody's likely to barge in.

It also harbors some extra phasers beneath a wall panel, but not everyone knows that.

They get there without looking like they're actually walking anywhere together, unfortunately not passing any members of security on the way. As soon as they're alone Jim says, "Computer, locate Commander Spock."

"Turbolift C."

"Good, he's already got him waylaid."

"Good?" she repeats almost mockingly. "He probably knows something's going on..."

Jim blinks. "If you—I mean, why did you—"

"I notified you right in front of them in case they caught their mistake, so they wouldn't suspect we're planning any resistance. Thank God you took the cue. You could've easily put the suspicion on only a couple of them or..." She trails off with an overwhelmed expression at the close call.

"Good thinking." He's kind of smiling, slowly. "...You think in some other universe somewhere you could have been my First?"

She lets out the tiniest laugh.

In the next silence, she's surprisingly immediate in asking him, "What did you see?"

Jim has started lightly pacing, brushing him thumb along his jaw anxiously. His glance is slowly interrupted into surprise as he realizes what she's asking.

"Is it gonna be okay? You and him?"

There is a blue clarity of emotion in Jim's eyes; he opens his mouth to reply something, but then his glance goes to the door.

"He's about here. Computer, activate discrete locking of the door after Commander Spock enters." And in a short moment the door slides open, Spock walks in with a smooth stance, and it hisses to a lock behind him.

"So there's no way at all to privately notify security?" Uhura immediately asks, somewhat already knowing the answer.

"Not..._really_, not with their hearing. We need to try to contain all the intruders as much as we can first, but we'll go on alert as soon as I think security's able to gather their numbers without any trouble. With that physical strength against whatever crew is close to them, we might as well consider them armed. Spock, you've calculated the likelihood that we're only dealing with one impostor versus an entire team of Romulans, I'm sure..." He gets a nod but no specifics, and grimaces with a tilt of his head. "You don't send in one man to do an assassination, maybe if you're Klingon, but it's not really their style."

"_Assassination_?" Uhura repeats.

"You have evaluated that someone is attempting to arrest or, less likely, execute you," Spock confirms, not in total disagreement.

"—Of course," Nyota's briskly interrupting as if coming out of her own evaluation, and with a little punctuating kick of her boot to the floor she paces out of the triangle of their stances, her arms crossed in irritation. She comes back indicating at Jim with an emphatic annoyance. "You're on your way to testify at a trial against a Romulan terrorist, in less than two weeks—Didn't _either_ of you think of this? Did you not even check for a trade verification?"

Jim just shakes his head, flatly says, "I was off my game. I fucked up." Uhura doesn't see any kind of reaction in Spock, but Jim double-takes a look in his direction and then argues with something unspoken, more broadly insistent as he directly snaps at him, "I'm the captain. I'm responsible."

"I will not remark, then, on the fact that neither I nor Nyota distinguished any trace of a Romulan accent in their dialect. Clearly, Captain, we are dealing with impeccably practiced actors."

"Yeah, and they're probably somehow associated with the same sons of bitches we dealt with several weeks ago..."

Spock then notices that Uhura is crouching down onto the floor next to the wall, and why. He looks at Jim. "You imparted to the lieutenant that you keep what I've said before is a non-regulation abundance of phaser weapons hidden in this part of the ship..."

"Yeah." Jim shrugs at Spock's narrow knowing look. "I did."

It only takes her half a minute to find the place where the crack between a couple of the tiles has a little latch in it, and snaps it forward quickly. A cushioned compartment whirs open. "How are we going to conceal these?" she asks.

"Pockets?"

With a smirk, she shakes her head in mild irritation, flips the safety on for the first one she's picked up and shoves it down under her neckline and in her bra where it creates some weird bulk but should be obtrusive enough. As she hands another phaser to Jim, she notices him slightly smiling.

Jim and Spock settle for the waists of their pants, the captain thankful as ever that tucking in shirts isn't formal regulation. "Okay, well," he mutters, "hopefully we won't actually need to hide them for that long. I've located the visitors—A couple are in the observation deck, Mavok—if that's even his name—is on the move somewhere, and the two others are in the engine room but probably moving soon. It would be best if we all separated—"

"Jim, I disagree," Spock interrupted, "if you are in fact the target—"

"Exactly the reason I should stay in plain sight, go on the move for the leader while both of you take the others."

An eyebrow lofts. "I would not assume that they are planning on being _discrete _simply because they boarded the ship under pretenses."

"Maybe not, but the reason they've even waited this long is probably because they're delaying till the ship gets more isolated to make any aggressive move. We have to assume our best chance to get them with their pants down is to disarm them before they know that we know, make them stay their course. If you see one, stun them, don't warn them or try to ask them anything, just do it, and get them thrown in the brig, _discretely_. Understood? Now, I want the two of you to go in around the hall to the observation deck first, but work together, I don't want either of you taking on two at a time."

Uhura is nodding, but biting her lip uncertainly. She's only a little bothered that Jim notices and adds, "I've seen you in simulations, Uhura, you'll be fine."

She hopes he's right, since this is a rather unexpected need for her standard skills in the security category and she's never had her aim depended on quite like this before. But Spock's expression mirrors Jim's lack of anxiety about what they're about to do, and it steadies her mind.

The three head for one turbolift and ride the quick drop to the corridor side of the main floor, and Jim leaves telling them both, "Stay sharp for me." Then Spock and Nyota give each other a glance before taking out their phasers, just before the lift opens and they leave simultaneously, in opposite directions, their motions catching little attention in the smooth sense of purpose they both carry. One officer narrows a slightly alarmed look at the weapon she has at her side, gets a quieting wave of a motion from her free hand.

As she nears the point in the corridor that curves around to where the door to the observatory lies, she hugs to the wall, hitching her phaser up slightly in front of her in case she's likely to catch any of the intruders departing.

"Computer," she mumbles at the nearest console, "locate—"

But, oh, oh, uh-oh: She hears a couple words from up ahead that she identifies to the member she heard talking to Jim on the bridge earlier, and backs up flush to the wall for a moment, confirming that the voice is approaching.

"Lieutenant?"

Dammit.

"Why are you armed with a—"

She cuts off in the middle of trying to interrupt the ensign, resolving to just go for it: She leaps into a run, phaser held out and pushing past a couple shoulders until the other ship's commander comes into view walking along next to a yeoman wearing a smile he is no longer reciprocating. And in the time it takes just to point and shoot, he gets out only one or two words in Romulan that she doesn't have time to process, and when he goes down stunned she's letting one curse loose, knowing he was probably on some kind of communicator.

"What the hell?..."

To the nearest officer she just snaps, "Get a security team to put him in the brig, and don't make a scene."

She jogs down the rest of the hall, and she's speaking some broken Terran Latin when she comms to Spock, _Just got Mavok, but they might have a warning now._ The foreign language earns her another perplexed glance from a member of engineering.

"Understood," comes a faint reply over the comm. She's nearing the observation deck, hears footfalls she's pretty sure are Spock's coming around the corner, and pretty soon she's got her back pressed just next to the observation deck door, and Spock comes up to take a similar stance at the other side. The same engineering ensign is wise enough to stop coming around the way, thinking to avoid causing the door to open even with a look of utter confusion.

She and Spock look at each other, then nod.

They turn and go through the entrance quickly, wielding arms outstretching as they bound solidly beyond the threshold, and Spock stuns one Romulan. The one Romulan.

She barely has a chance to register any confusion before a lurching force pulls her back; she's quickly writhing as the one who was surely waiting for them next to the entrance sharply cramps her movements with the ease of his or her strength. Uhura lets out one resistant grunt, and then she feels something tap against her neck.

"Shoot him. _Shoot him_!" she snaps. But Spock is hesitating, his motions paused and helpless; she lets out an infuriated yelp, wriggling her glance down to see that the thing held against her neck seems to be a kind of injecting device, and just angrily yells, "_Damn_ it!"

"What is that?" Spock demands icily.

The couple other officers in the observation deck seem to understand what's going on then, because Vulcans surely never snicker.

Then the alarms start beeping, the red blinking through the borders on the walls; Spock and Nyota exchange alert looks of mixed understanding and puzzlement. Behind her the Romulan is having an irritated and unsure reaction, and seems to take it out on his grasp of her a little. "_Ow_," she complains.

Then, before he's done with her and letting her drop, she feels the pricking at her neck.

She manages only one step.

The floor slams into her before she even registers the sensation of total paralysis. Disoriented, she attempts to look around, move her head, move her legs, move anything. Move a finger. She can't.

She feels cold. A tickling iciness washes through her, feeling worse for her incapacity to even shiver, and by now she's infuriated that she can't move and can't see anything, she doesn't seem mentally weakened yet, she just _can't move_.

After what could only be seconds but feels like minutes, movement buzzes around her head; her body is pulled. But her eyelids are half closed and she only sluggishly registers anything visually. Her senses seem partly intact: She can feel the numb-buzz bouncing of her rubber heels against the floor. She's being dragged? Carried?

Yes. Her knees are wobbling against each other. She's missing a boot. And she's cold still. Her hearing is swelling back from the soupy fuzz, but...

Is that Jim? Is Jim the one carrying her? How could he—?

What she hears is a peeling in and out of continuous, urgent commands, and then just, "Spock!" A more direct shout, followed by the sirening out of his voice again. Wait...

It isn't Jim, it's a communicator. Spock's communicator. Spock is carrying her. She can't move. She's cold. Spock is...

"—_Spock_! Spock, are you—?!"

"Put her down, put her down!" McCoy. Oh, good, McCoy. Oh, God, what the hell is going on, she can't even think where she is, the floor is cold against her elbows...

Now conscious of the identity of the arms clutching around her now, spilling her gently down, she's able to register the slightly unusual intensity of his breathing, a bunched tension in it, and why isn't he answering...?

A couple minutes seem to pass, a hand brushing clinically against her pulse. She starts to concentrate on getting her eyes to open, but a pain is beginning to bite through her insides...

"_Spock_."

She registers now, dimly, the actual nature of the repeated shouting that comes through as if dispersed among more urgent needs, pictures the captain attending with an air of tightly coiled thoughts to the immediate panic, then back again, saying just Spock's name. It seems in itself a substitute for wording a question the other already knows would be asked.

Then at a quieter, more unsettled timbre: "...Nyota?"

"She..." Spock is trailing off as she feels a hypospray go into her, and in only seconds, a tingling spread of motor control. Yes. Yes. Her eyes can open, she can do that. Spock is explaining, "She appears to have been injected with a poison..."

"Jim, I'm right here," McCoy interrupts. He goes on to explain something about her vitals, something Jim needs to know, meaning this has probably been done to other people. She tests her vocal chords and manages a peeling hum of a note, and her blurry vision sees Spock's head tilt down.

"I—"

The one word interrupts McCoy's explanation to Jim; she hears from him, "Good, good. Talk to me, honey."

"Hurts. My stomach..." She manages that efficient complaint before she realizes it's getting worse and very fast, lets out a wincing noise. She wonders if whatever they gave her that made her able to move also lessened her tolerance of the pain. She groans, "_God_—And why does my—My hand hurts, is it..."

"Mr. Spock," she hears McCoy scold.

She realizes that Spock's hand is clamped tightly around hers the moment he lets go. And then there's another vaccine, and then it hurts a little less. And then she's out.

.

.

.

.

She opens her eyes to see the ceiling of the mess hall.

Her head is rested on something that isn't very soft, but it makes her able to look around without really lifting her head, and she takes in a somewhat bustled mess of many people sitting around, seemingly too many. A couple people over, she hears the tones of people whispering, and the feeling that they are trying not to be heard makes her not like the idea of speaking up, so she just lies there until she realizes the person directly in front of her is McCoy.

She nudges her socked foot into him; he looks, then in a very swift but casual way, sidles across the floor till he's next to her, very quietly reaching somewhere for yet another hypospray as he leans over her and mutters, "We're all stuck in here until Jim agrees to go with them. That's their plan, at least. They keep injecting this into more people...Everybody's fine now, but if I can't get to anything in medical before a day is up..."

"How long have I been—?"

"Only about eight hours."

She blinks as she tests her ability to move various parts of her body. "...'Go with them'," she hazily repeats.

"As in give himself up. They don't want such a strong presence speaking against their guy at the hearing, and this trial is urgent enough there's a chance it would commence without us..." The doctor shakes his head as he surreptitiously prepares the vaccine. "Honestly, I'm surprised it took him over a year for anybody out there to want him dead. How are you feeling?"

"I feel like I swallowed a couple razor blades and I'm still a little cold, but besides that, I'm okay," she says. In reference to the cold, she's registered the feel of extra fabric, and now peeks down at her body to notice a blue uniform shirt put loosely on her; and under it, a layer of gold. Her mind tenses around that fact, approaching an edge of emotion she isn't prepared for at the moment.

She hears light padding footsteps approaching, quite fast, and then just as someone drops quickly down to her she manages a weak movement of her head. Jim is appearing over her, both relieved and concerned, just whispering, "Hey."

"Hey," she replies. "You're not gonna do anything heroic, are you?"

"Depends." That's all he says for a moment, but then he shrugs and says at a barely audible whisper as he pretends to be occupied with something else, "We've got kind of a plan. I was going to give myself up right off the bat, but Spock wouldn't have it."

She's finally checking a look around her, spotting the two enemies guarding the door who could probably keenly hear almost any conversation in the room. She notices Spock sitting halfway across the mess hall now helping McCoy attend to someone, asks, "How many others got attacked?"

"We think only three," Jim replies, and all the frustration is apparent in his expression. It's not just the injuries but the general invasion, the fact that they were managing to make him a hostage on his own ship. She can see the anger tightening through his mouth, bleeding into his words. "Once Scotty gets the controls back on..."

"Is Chekov stuck in here?" she whispers with a look around.

"No," Jim replies, understanding why she'd ask.

"Our chances are pretty good, don't you think?" She shrugs wryly. "What's the plan so far on this end?"

"Creating a diversion," Jim says. "I'm gonna pick a fight, make it look like I'm attempting to steal one of their vaccines."

She narrows an almost grimly amused look at him.

"As long as Spock gets a chance to do a neck pinch on either of them..."

"You're gonna get your ass kicked, Jim."

"Yeah, well, it's the least I can do," he replies flatly.

A pause settles over them, and she idly watches Jim watching Spock for the moment; his expression is somehow calm in the middle of the mess as his eyes follow the other, and she wonders if their mental link is still there. She sort of doubts that they'll be keeping that up again, even if it helped with a few things today. It doesn't seem like they should really need it anymore.

She finally asks. "How did you know?"

He blinks down at her. "...What?"

"When I got hurt. You were asking Spock about me. But nobody explained to you what happened. How did you..."

His eyes slightly melt into a raw intensity against hers, but the rest of his expression is light, as he moves around Spock's loose shirt to try to warm her neck. "You don't believe a damn thing I ever say, do you?" he asks, without looking directly at her. After a moment, in a voice low and brittle even for the hushed tone in the room, he mutters with simple certainty, "I felt it."

Her arm, with its sparse amount of strength, reaches out; her hand digs at his stomach just under the ribs. "...There?"

He's weakened by that motion into a soft fervor and he reaches for her hand and clutches it, holds it up and kisses her palm close against his chin, and he just replies, "You scared the shit out of us."

And suddenly she's full up, ten different emotions in her warring against the physical pain, and losing. When she looks up at Jim his eyes have only deepened in their emotional color.

"You know," he declares, "I really fucking hate it when you cry."

She manages a defiant smile. "I bit my tongue this time."

Spock is coming over then, situating himself on her left so that the two of them can help her sit up a bit against the wall while they pass their hidden mutterings, disputing with their natural rhythm about the plan, the back-up plan, the potential actions of the crew outside. She knows it will be okay. She feels whatever is between them cascade through her now, warming her slightly. Later it will be noise and chaos again, more time in sick bay, paperwork and communications jamming through too many signals and eventually somebody clapping Jim on the back with a half-effectual note of praise, the ship safe and returning gallantly to oblivion for more of the same. And somewhere out there is still firm ground, and time for something sleeping in her chest she can't yet name, space for breathing; she tells herself this as her head helplessly lulls to the side on a shoulder and she manages in the middle of the quiet crisis to make a spare joking mutter of "Permission to land, Captain?"

And she hears a distracted but pleased mutter of "Always," before she falls asleep.


End file.
